Chapter 0 — Before you call support

The manual
already told
you.

Ninety percent of the things that go wrong with a printer, a router, or a laptop have a documented fix. It is usually in the manual. The manual is usually a PDF you never opened.

So we read the f**king manual for you, then wrote it out in plain English, with numbered steps and no thirty-paragraph life story before the actual answer.

The RTFM manifesto

  1. 1Read it first. The answer is often on page one, under a heading you skimmed past.
  2. 2Turn it off and on — but understand why that works before you do it again.
  3. 3One change at a time. If you flip five settings, you fixed nothing — you got lucky.
  4. 4Write down what you did. Future you will need it at 2am.

— Est. circa 2001. Still true.

Latest fixes

All guides →