Suppose you receive a phone call from a client in Sales who cannot print a repor

Question

Suppose you receive a phone call from a client in Sales who cannot print a report on a printer in the Research and Development department. The report is from a database created on a server located at headquarters. The client tells you that other members of the Sales department are able to print to the Research and Development department. You check the printer and you are able to send a test page to the Research and Development department printer. Which of the following would be the most appropriate first step in troubleshooting this issue? Unplug the printer from the wall electrical outlet and then plug it back in Remotely reboot the database server at headquarters Reset the router by power cycling it Have the user verify printer network properties

Explanation / Answer

first step:

Unplug the printer from the wall electrical outlet and then plug it back in

Remotely reboot the database server at headquarters

Reset the router by power cycling it

Have the user verify printer network properties

Other employees in Sales can print to the printer

The computer can access the headquarters database server

Research and Development clients can print to the Sales printer

You can print to the Research and Development printer

Verify printer accessible through local network, verify PC network connectivity, verify access to server, and verify access to corporate database

Verify printers work at corporate headquarters, verify network equipment closet has power, and verify local printer is turned on

Verify computer IP configuration is correct, verify PC network connectivity, and verify that the PC has correct printer configuration

Verify printer has paper, verify network configuration is correct on the computer, and verify that headquarters servers are connected to the network

Reboot all computers and network devices in Inventory Control, wait for all network devices to synchronize, and reboot servers in headquarters

Verify IP address settings on computers in Inventory Control, verify connectivity to router, and verify information in router routing table

Verify that servers in headquarters are operational, recycle headquarter router, and verify that Inventory Control workstations are linked to headquarters

Restart all routers, verify that all routers are synchronized, verify that network equipment closet has power, and verify that servers are turned on

the common first step to trouble shouting:

Before you can delve into any kind of troubleshooting of an issue you need to thoroughly define it. If you don’t you’ll probably end up spending a lot of time randomly gathering and looking at data that is probably not even relevant to the issue at hand. More importantly, how do you even know that your problem is fixed if you don’t have a good definition of the problem?

This might sound like common sense, but having worked with troubleshooting the better part of the last 10 years I can tell you that it is extremely common that people start looking at data before really understanding the problem. More often than not this is because people are stressed and want to fix the problem fast, or maybe because the problem space is unknown to them so they have difficulties defining what information or details are important. Sometimes symptoms are even contradictory which makes it even more difficult to troubleshoot something, as you don’t know if you can trust the data.

I don’t have a silver bullet recipe for success but I wanted to share how I approach an issue (in a pretty generic way) and I welcome any and all input that you might have on the topic as good scoping/problem definitions is something that is often a topic of discussion at my workplace.

What I do know for a fact is that a lot of times, the issues where we don’t have a proper problem definition that is agreed between all parties, tend to take a lot longer to resolve than the ones they do. Similar to if you have a software project where you haven’t spent proper time on working with the customer on their requirements. And in the end, if you had a good agreement between all parties, you don’t end up resolving the wrong problem.

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