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Troubleshooting

Chapter Four: Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting is how you determine what part of a complex system
(like a home theater system) is at fault when the system isn’t working
how you think it should. When you troubleshoot a system, you diagnose
a problem by examining and eliminating possible causes until there’s
only one left. Troubleshooting is easiest when you start with the most
obvious, most common, and most likely and work from there.
Diagnosing your own problems can save you time and aggravation—the
better you understand how to troubleshoot and adjust your own system,
the less time you have to:
• spend on the phone with a customer service representative
• do without your receiver because it’s “in the shop”
There are some basic steps to good troubleshooting:
1. Verify the exact conditions when the problem occurs.
This is the most important step in troubleshooting. Whether you fix
it yourself or have to describe it to a technician, you are much more
likely to really solve the problem if you know the exact circumstances
surrounding the problem. For example, if you don’t hear anything
through the speakers, it’s useful to know if it only happens when you
are listening to CDs. Knowing that eliminates the speakers themselves
as part of the problem. The more you know about when a problem
occurs, the more likely it is that you or the technician can solve it.
2. Check each part of the signal’s path from source (such as a CD
player) to speaker.
You may also want to test the assumptions you made in step 1: maybe
you haven’t listened to your MD recorder in a while— is there no
sound from it as well? This step will really help narrow down the
possible causes. Test all your connected components and eliminate
the ones where the problem doesn’t occur. When you’re done with
this step, you’ll probably have found the problem.