There are specialists out there who offer computer technical assistance. You might encounter a problem that will inquire you ask someone for the solution. There are some options to seek the technical assistance you need, either find a forum where you can ask your questions and receive the answers you need to solve your technical problem, most likely you will be able to find such solution from someone on the forum/blog who knows the solution to your problem.

There are blogs, where you can place your questions and receive answers. There are computer technical experts that will be able to assist you or direct you to a close technical resource that can give you assistance.

There are also places that offer computer technical assistance and support for your problems, you will just need to check which of them is the closest to your place, so you can take your computer to them or get them to send you a technician that can assist you at your own place. You will be able to get the physical assistance you need, instead of doing things yourself they will come, find your problem, and solve it for a reasonable cost.

When you need computer assistance, you can always find a solution, there are many experts out there, either at a technician lab near your

location or you can seek a solution online, while you search for the solution to the problems you encounter, or you can contact a friend if you have one and get his assistance if he has a computer technical knowledge.

So to summarize, you can always seek assistance, just don’t hesitate to contact the resources that can help you with it.

There are different tools that will enable someone to assist you, even if he is not near your computer. Those tools enable the support person to get control of your computer, see what you see, so he can see the problem you encounter, and perform the solution to try and solve your problem. You can see all that he does on your computer, and of course, you are the one who initiates the connection to that assisting person from afar.

Most of the technical people who offer online computer assistance are using a web application called “WEBEX“, that is a website tool, that the support assisting person will give you the link to that WEBEX application website, where you will get from him the Login information, and of course, you will be the one who accepts the assistance connection, to let the online assistant technician take control of your computer, and you can see all of his activities on your computer and disconnect him if you’re not happy with his actions on your computer, you are in control.

Another tool is the “TEAMVIEWER“, this tool needs to be installed on both computers, the one giving the online assistance and the client who asks for the assistance. When both have this tool, the one who wants to connect to the other, needs to ask the other to give him the ID number (showing on his TEAMVIEWER) and the password (usually numbers), using those details, the online assisting person can get connected to your computer, see what you see, and again see the problem and conduct the stages to solve them, while you can watch. Again as you can see the client requesting the online assistance is the one who initiates the connection, without the ID & Password details, the remote assisting person can’t take control of your computer, again you’re in control.

Another online support option is getting a chat with an online technician, that in a chat can try and guide you on the steps you might need to solve your problem. The chat is called “Live Person”, and it enables support professionals to give online assistance, as they chat with the client, ask for the information which relates to the problem the client has,
and guide him on how to solve his problem. This might not be the best way or the continent one to work out your problems, but this is another online assistance you can use, and of course, if you do not have a way to get the previous solutions of full control of the online assisting person, chatting with a professional and do it yourself with his guidance still can solve your problem.

Sometimes we reach situations that require remote assistance, which means that we do not have someone close to us that can assist our computer problems, that we need to ask a support person to give us remote assistance. There are different tools to get remote assistance, I will discuss some tools and techniques that enable to get such remote access, mostly on the windows operating system environment.

Windows XP has a remote desktop assistance feature built-in that you can enable before you can let someone from the outside take control of your computer, see your problems and try and assist your computer.

The procedures are:

1. Right-click “my computer” (you should have it on your desktop or through start-> my computer).
2. Select “properties”
3. Click on the “remote” tab.
4. Tag the check-box of the “allow remote assistance invitations to be sent from this computer”
5. Click on the “advanced” button.
6. Tag the check-box of the “allow this computer to be controlled remotely”
7. Both computers need to have internet access – (connected to the internet).
8. Go to the desktop and press F1 (this will open the basic help menu).
9. On the right-hand side under ask for assistance press the “invite a friend to connect to your computer with remote assistance”
10. Now select (click) the “invite someone to help you”
11. Select how you want to do the invitation, you can choose from a “windows messenger” (downloading it) or e-mail the invitation using an e-mail address.
12. Type the message you want, and “continue”
13. Set the number of hours that you want your computer to be accessible for remote assistance (this will close the access from the outside after the time period expires). Also choose if you want to set a password or not (if you choose yes, the remote assistance person will have to know what password you have set in order to be able to access your computer).
14. The remote assistance will receive an e-mail with an attachment and will need to accept the invitation, you will be prompted to connect to the sender, then type the password if it was set (if you don’t know it, contact the person you’re supposed to assist remotely). open the attachment, and select “open it”.
15. Click yes to connect to the remote computer.
16. From here you will get control of the remote computer. (This enables you to transfer files, start a chat session (online contact with the remote client who asked for assistance) all that in real-time and of course see what the remote computer sees and try to see the problem and solve it.

There are many companies who offer such remote assistance for supporting clients, some of them use a session called  “WEBEX“, the WEBEX application is hosted on a website, and the remote support person gives you as a client an internet address, that address will enable you to click a “connect” button, which will prompt a request for a key (which you will get from the support person) and after clicking that authenticated code you have received from the support person, he will be able to control your computer. That type of technology creates a connection between the support and the remote client, it’s like the client gives access to the remote session and enables the connection to be open.

Another way to connect to a remote windows operating system (server or client), the one who wants to connect to the remote client is using a program called MSTSC, you just do START–>RUN and type MSTSC and press ENTER. That opens a remote desktop client. There you need to type the remote client’s IP or computer name, then you get the login of the remote client as if you are on that computer, and you just type in the user and password and you will be logged in to that computer as if you are on the server itself.

There is a way to connect to your organization as if you’re at the office, even though your somewhere else in the world. This technique is called VPN (Virtual Private Network). VPN enables you to create a connection, that enables you while you get the connection to work as if you are locally at your office’s network. You gain an IP from the local LAN (local network of the organization) and you can work as if you were at your office, connected to the local LAN (local network). Such a connection enables you to connect to any computer that is connected to the office network, and get access to give the assistance one of the employee needs.

There are many computer problems, of different types, either hardware or software issues that might require a

Mature man leaning on office desk, side view

professional assistance. A good example will be that if your computer has a hardware problem and of course you do not have a computer technicians lab that includes hardware spare parts and the knowledge what to replace and how to fix your problem, it will require you to get your computer to the technician’s lab (like sick people go to a doctor – to get fixed 🙂 ).

So how do we discover what type of assistance we need? (it is partly important to understand or at least try to understand the computer problem we are having, so it will help us in contacting the suitable assistance we need). Computers like any machine gets broken down, get damaged (I don’t mean by a baseball bat) but I am more in the worn out due to extensive use. This doesn’t mean you’re killing your computer as you strain it while you work, it just means that your computer is working for a long while, and some parts got tired (worn out) and need to be replaced.

The same description that I explained about hardware fits the case of computer software needing assistance. We work on the computer, on our software, operating system or whatever, and we copy files, delete files, move files, install programs etc… We sometime just catch a virus even with an anti-virus program (if you accepted a popup that jumped up while you where browsing not knowing that this popup was a virus asking for permission to install itself on your computer) and all of those actions might cause the software to become unstable (I will get into how and why it gets unstable on other parts of this website). When the computer software becomes unstable, we experience crashes, blue screens of death (not to worry – it’s an expression that we tech guys call the crashing blue screen Microsoft windows has, no one will die 🙂 ), the computer might reboot itself, not load properly or not load at all. Those occurrences require computer assistance.

So, where do we find the assistance we need ? Well, you can try making some calls to friends you might know who knows computers, or work with computers and they might stumble upon such issues that your experiencing. You can also try searching the internet, or just browse your local paper for technician labs in your area, and get your computer to the professional “doctors” to get your computer fixed. They will be able to determine if your computer has hardware or software problems, and of course give you a price offer for fixing the computer and getting it back in working order.

frustrated office worker

You can also post your assistance request (if its non hardware related) on the web (the internet), there are many

forums that you can post your questions, and other people who are participating on the forum, might give you the solution you need. You will get the guided step by step operations needed to solve your problem. Most of the software problems that you might encounter are most likely happened to other people who might be noticing your question, remembering they had just the same case, and they will post the answer so you will be able to fix your problem.

Most of the problems computers have are due to their age, (how old they are since you bought them). If there are electricity issues, or just a blast of lightning that happen during the winter while there was a serious storm outside that causes the motherboard (the board that all of the computer parts connects to) to short out, or burn some essential units that enable it to operate, and thus disable your computer from turning on, or giving hardware problems (blue screens).

We are working with computers, and no matter how experienced we are, we will probably stumble upon a situation we have never seen before, some problem that we have no idea how to solve. Even if we are very experienced, we can’t know it all, we couldn’t have tried all aspects of a computer subject, no matter how long we were working with a certain subject. Although the experience will decrease the chances we will stumble upon such a challenge, we probably will still need to solve some challenges we didn’t encounter before.

We can use several ways to get computer assistance. We can call the closest computer technician to solve our problem at home or get our problematic computer to the computer lab and get it the treatment it needs. We can also search solutions on the internet, as the internet has become such an enormous bank of information, we can try and seek the information we need to solve our problem from someone else that has encountered the problem, solved it, and was willing to share it on the internet, in case someone else (like us) encountered the same exact problem.

We can also find computer professionals, who had much experience in certain areas (when you work in a certain computer area for years, you will gain much knowledge of that specific area, in such way that the amount of knowledge you have on the subject characterize you as an expert in that field) like anything with practice you become more efficient and confident in the area you practiced. So those professionals can either build a website and share their knowledge with the world or just become independent that assist those who need assistance in the areas they are experts on.

Mostly the computer problem has to be categorized, we can have software issues, that might involve virus, or operating system crash, or just a bad software update that can cause our computer to become unstable. On the other hand, it might be a hardware problem, which if we don’t have a computer technical knowledge or spare hardware parts, we might have to get the damaged computer to a lab where they have all the tools to determine what exactly is the problem with your computer. If you do have the technical computer knowledge and the hardware spare parts, you can seek the solution on the internet and use the guides to fix the computer yourself.

Since the most common search engine on the web is Google, you can Google your question and get the assistance you need.