July 3, 2004

WHAT do you do when your personal computer suddenly conks out for no evident reason? More often than not, people simply pick up their phone at the slightest problem and call the place of purchase for technical support. Sometimes that means waiting forever on hold. But what if the shop where you purchased your PC from doesn’t exist anymore? Don’t worry. If you don’t feel like spending ridiculously large sums of money at unknown PC-fixing shops, there’s a much easier way of getting things done at a price you can’t refuse. Welcome to the realm of free tech support sites.

Third-party tech support sites have been around for quite some time now, offering handy tips on a plethora of computer-based problems. To access them, all you need is a PC with a connection to internet. Although they are supported by ads, majority of these sites are free and only require you to register, and more than a few provide excellent advice. But which ones can you turn to in times of woe?

and , are bulletin boards where people collaborate by posting all their queries and answers for each other. Forums, undoubtedly, provide the most solutions, for you get an assortment of opinions on solving a single problem. The best part is that any one person’s good advice will nullify another’s bad counsel. It is solely due to their give-and-take experience that forums are so effective.

Furthermore, you can also search past forum messages to check if the problem you’re facing has been discussed before and obtain answers to it.

Expert advice: The sites such as About.com and Protonic.com, rely on an “expert” to answer your questions — all you have to do is to post your question. Only one person (the “expert”) reads your question, and only you read his or her answer to that query. Moreover, the quality of answers varies extensively, depending entirely on the expert’s knowledge; more often than not, this expert is just a volunteer. Expert advice sites are invariably recommended for those who need simple answers, without ever having to delve into the technicalities of computers or having to decide which solution to adopt as in the case of forums.

However, there is a stipulation. Waiting is the name of the game whenever you post a question on a forum or on an expert site. Still, forums prove to be far more responsive than expert sites, the simple reason being that when you ask several people a single question, someone is bound to give a response; when you ask only one, he or she may take some time to get back to you. Typically, the waiting period for forums is approximately an hour — but it strongly depends on how busy or active the forum is, whereas on expert advice sites, it may take a couple of days. Also, keep in mind that if you post your query on a very popular expert site, the quality of its service won’t necessarily be consistent owing to limited working staff.

Knowledgebase: At a Knowledgebase such as or , you can search an online database to find answers to specific questions. Though the information that you retrieve would be provided to you instantly, only a small number of the answers would be pertinent, the rest would all be irrelevant material.

As mentioned earlier, there’s a multitude of free tech support sites out there. Some of the popular ones include , , , , , , and . Though no single site performs consistently, most provide very good service for answers to questions relating to different issues: the Windows operating system, its applications and even hardware devices. Bear in mind that several sites offer more than one approach that is some may present both forums and expert advice.

Although only a few sites have been covered in this article, some of the ones left out either offer a mix of free and fee-based services or just the latter. For instance, offers a premium service (costs about $10 per month) for quick expert answers as well as a point-based system to ration the number of questions you can ask. In the latter case, users have to help each other out by answering questions in order to earn “expert points.” Once the aggregate points have reached a certain level, users can attain the premium service free of charge.

How to ask for help

Asking a question on a site can be tricky. If the people trying to help you out don’t have enough information regarding your computer, they may not be able to answer your question until you’ve answered theirs, turning a simple query into a torrent of message exchanges. So, if you need your answer fast, you need to ensure that you have every relevant fact stuffed into your original query.

You should start your message with a brief description of the problem you’re facing before getting into a detailed description of it. Along with that, here’s what else you need to include:

Hardware: More importantly, you need to correctly identify and write your PC’s specifications. To do so in WindowsXP, right-click “My Computer” and select “Properties”. Under “Computer”, you’ll see the CPU and the amount of installed system RAM you have. Next, click the tab labeled “Hardware,” followed by “Device Manager.” This will list all the hardware devices you have installed on your system.

Software: You also need to list which operating system you’re using (such as Windows XP) as well as the names of all software that loads whenever you start your PC. To find that out, in Windows XP/98/ME, click “Start” and select “Run.” Then type in “msconfig” (without the inverted commas). Next, click on the tab labeled “Startup.” There you’ll see a list of the names of all startup items.

Some sites have also started Live chat features, which enable you to communicate directly with experts, thereby providing a speedier dialogue than simple email, which may take a couple of days.

In a nutshell: The web is full of help. Though tech support sites occasionally make mistakes (like everyone else), they offer a helpful substitute if your PC vendor fails to provide prompt, dependable advice.

The writer is a regular contributor