How to tell if the problem with your computer is caused by software or hardware

Computers are complicated machines, and any of a variety of issues could go wrong. Although they're reliable enough to be the majority of the time, there are bound to be some exceptions. However, if something goes wrong on your computer, how do you determine whether the issue is caused by software or hardware?

Sometimes, it's simple. If the computer will not begin, it's likely to be the processor or power supply. If your computer is making a lot of beeping sounds before it shuts down, it could be overheating or experiencing an error with memory. If your computer is starting, but there is no display, it could be due to your graphics processor.

Most of the time than not, the solution is very difficult to determine. However, there are several ways to identify if an issue is software or hardware. Here are the procedures that our technicians would take to know.

• Examine the symptoms. Are you experiencing slow performance on your computer? Can it boot? Is it blue on the screen? Make funny noises? Not starting at all? The first step to diagnosing a computer issue is determining what's wrong. It is often possible to determine precisely what and where the problem is. When you're in no position to tell us, we'd like to discover the cause.

• Remove any recent changes. We'd like to ask whether you've made recent modifications to your computer prior to the issue started. Have you installed hardware? Have you updated your drivers? Have you made any other adjustments? These can tell us right away what the issue could be. Then we can reverse or undo the modifications to determine if it solves the issue. Nine out of ten, it works.

• Start in Safe Mode. We would start Windows to Safe Mode to see if we can reproduce or eliminate the symptoms you've described. If the computer functions perfectly when it's in Safe Mode, it means it's an issue with the software, which is why we have a set of tools and methods to get around the issue. If symptoms continue to persist, the issue could be related to the core Windows hardware or files.

In Safe Mode, we would perform check and repair of files to determine if we are able to resolve the issue within Windows. If the problem appears like hardware issues, then we should test the hardware by swapping out components using our own working spares and see if symptoms are still present or not.