Troubleshooting Archives

Home » Troubleshooting

Hisense TV won’t power on: the 1 minute fix

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting May 15, 2023May 6, 2023

If your Hisense TV won’t power on, I have a 1 minute fix. Your TV isn’t broken, it’s just a bit confused. In this blog post, I’ll cover basic troubleshooting for your Hisense TV that almost always gets it up and running again very quickly.

When your Hisense TV won’t power on, it’s usually an easy fix. After making sure it’s receiving power, unplugging it and holding the power button with the power off before plugging it back in works wonders.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

Mac stuck on lock screen? A no-reboot fix

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting October 25, 2022October 26, 2022

A Mac stuck on the lock screen can be perplexing and infuriating. When you enter your password, the computer is supposed to unlock. When faced with a Mac stuck on lock screen, here’s how I fix it.

The problem looks like this: Your screen saver kicks on because you’ve been idle for too long. You come back to your computer, hit a key or move the mouse and it prompts you for your password. You enter your password, and it kicks you right back to your lock screen.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

u200b: What it is, and why it messes up your code or data

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting August 31, 2020September 6, 2023

I was pushing some old data through an API at work when I received a weird error message. The API coughed up a hairball. It responded that I had u200b at position 154, and if I needed that character, I’d have to encode it. But I looked at position 154 and it was a number. Nothing weird. Some APIs render this problem character as u+200b. So what’s u200b, why does a problematic invisible character exist, and how do you clean it up?

U200b is a Unicode non-printing space character. It’s meant to assist typographers in creating page layouts, and it’s extremely useful in certain languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet. But many of us who use the Roman alphabet may go a lifetime without needing it.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Root cause – what it is and why it’s important

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting March 18, 2020March 17, 2020

The term root cause is used in engineering and related disciplines. It simply means identifying the source of a bigger issue. Finding the root cause helps to keep the problem from happening again.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Tube radio buzz: The non-obvious fix

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting November 7, 2019February 2, 2022

I picked up a cool-looking old tube radio the other day. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. When you turn it on, instead of a signal, you hear loud buzzing. Here’s what causes tube radio buzz and how to get it fixed.

Of course we assume any problem with a tube radio is the vacuum tubes. But loud buzzing is usually caused by bad capacitors, not tubes.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

What does No Internet Secured mean?

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting May 28, 2018October 11, 2019

What does No Internet Secured mean? It’s potentially the least helpful error message in all of Windows 10. And it doesn’t help that it doesn’t look at all like an error message either. So let’s talk about what it means when Windows 10 says No Internet, Secured, and more importantly, how to fix it.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Curing random errors when installing Office 2013

Dave Farquhar Software, Troubleshooting, Windows May 19, 2015November 29, 2015office 2013, TEMP, TMP, windows 7

I got lots of random errors installing Office 2013 when I went to do it, including error code 112-4 and error code 0-4, and some other install errors mostly ending in 4 that aren’t documented on Microsoft’s web site. Although previously undocumented, these errors are fixable. Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Using the OSI model to troubleshoot video

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Troubleshooting April 30, 2015November 28, 2016amd, nvidia, OSI, osi model, PNY

I was at church on Sunday and the video projection wasn’t working. After a few minutes of watching everyone struggle, I volunteered to take a look, and working together, we were able to get the video working again using a simple, repeatable methodology: Using the OSI model to troubleshoot video.

I’m going to share that methodology now.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Don’t forget the .NET Framework when troubleshooting

Dave Farquhar Troubleshooting, Windows April 1, 2014November 21, 2018troubleshooting

I’ve been troubleshooting a program that’s written in a combination of Java and .NET (yes, now I’ve seen everything), and the program misbehaved. It misbehaved a lot, and the vendor was confused too. About four hours in, one of us had the idea to uninstall the .NET Framework 4.0 and install the newest .NET Framework 4.5.1. The 4.5.1 framework is designed to be backwards compatible with multiple predecessors.

It turned out to be the miracle cure that had eluded us.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

How I fixed an infuriating printer problem

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Troubleshooting, Windows February 9, 2011January 7, 2025hp, laserjet, windows 7, windows me

Windows 7 and my HP Laserjet 4100 weren’t getting along. And I was pretty livid about it. I paid $125 for my Windows 7 upgrade, and for that money, I got to mess around for 4 days trying to get better-than-1997 functionality out of what’s supposed to be the latest and greatest. I was about ready to trade it even up for a copy of Windows ME and Microsoft Bob. Because at least then I’d be able to print.

I finally fixed the problem, but finding the solution wasn’t easy. So I’ll present the symptoms and the ultimate solution here.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

← Previous