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Whether working on a computer personally or professionally, I have found it exceptionally important to be able to troubleshoot when things go wrong. Understanding the lights, sounds and occasionally smells of a machine will invariably help determine the root cause of a given issue.

The most frustrating thing to troubleshoot in my opinion is when a computer does not boot and all you have are cryptic lights blinking, glowing or not turning on at all. Most motherboards these days are equipped with LED (“light emitting diodes”) readouts that will, in theory, display a helpful sign when things go awry. In practice, I have found the lights to be, at best, a somewhat helpful indicator of a potential problem. With my personal desktop computer I built from scratch I opted for an additional (and somewhat costly) feature to replace such annoyingly vague lights. In this case it displays an alpha-numeric two digit code which can easily be referenced in the motherboard manual. This means that if, say, the processor is acting up I can look up the code and identify that my processor is the culprit rather than waste time looking into unrelated areas.

Beeping noises can also be an interesting way to determine when something is wrong. Case in point: inaccurate dates or times on a computer. Usually, a computer will beep or make some indication when the CMOS (“Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor”) battery dies. This battery (which is about the size of a watch battery) is responsible for continuously trickling a light stream of electricity via the battery to the motherboard in order to keep the date and time accurate. This is important because computers rely entirely on accurate date and time keeping functions in order to, well, function. For example, if your system date and time are incorrect these will not match up with security certificates on websites and you may not be able to view or access certain content, let alone log in if you’re on a network machine.

In the case of smells, I have a somewhat humorous story from some years ago when I used to overclock my computer. Back then it was possible to “unlock” latent or hidden capabilities of a central processing unit (CPU) if you were lucky enough to have the right components. In my case, I bought a quad core processor that could, in theory, be unlocked to have six cores for the same price as the quad core. Bear in mind, at this point in time a hex-core processor was incredibly expensive so the savings seemed to be worth the time to figure this out. After following directions for adjusting settings in my BIOS (“Basic Input/Output System”) to allow this to happen I was greeted with an unlocked six core processor! This worked well, for a short period of time. You see, there happened to be a manufacturing defect within the soldering of my motherboard. This meant that my motherboard caught fire. Or, at least it would have had I not noticed the burning smell emanating from my computer case. Noticing that my computer wasn’t turning on like normal and detecting the smell, I immediately unplugged the unit from the wall and started airing out my room with fans. If I had not been able to troubleshoot this issue via scent I may not have been able to tell you the tale in question.

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