5 Most Common Employee PC Issues and How to Resolve Them

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The invention and proliferation of personal computers or PCs has undoubtedly improved the efficiency of countless businesses. Still, as amazing as PCs can be, employee errors can often lead to lost productivity. Since many of these errors can generally be resolved with a modicum of information and experience, do not unnecessarily let PC errors derail your business. Learn more about the five most common employee PC issues and how to solve them quickly and efficiently. 

PC Will Seemingly Not Turn on or Power Up 

While the advice of checking the status of your PCs power supply may seem almost as much of a cliché as "have you tried turning it off and on again?", you might be surprised to discover that power issues are one of the most common PC issues for employees. You have almost certainly experienced the immediate rush of anger and frustration when a piece of technology fails to turn on after working perfectly until now. This can prod you or your workers towards rash actions.  

Given that PC rage is a genuine phenomenon, it can easily lead people to pound on the keyboard, shake their PCs, or engage in other activities which range from not especially useful to actively harmful to the device in question. Rather than panicking, you should establish whether there are genuine hardware issues or whether the problem could result from a loose power cable attachment, a faulty monitor, or a plug that has been knocked out of the socket. 

The Office Wi-Fi Network Suddenly Goes Down 

The internet has become a critical resource and infrastructure for many businesses, making any service outages potentially disastrous for your employees' daily activities. Without the ability to send communications across the office or the globe, not being able to access any corporate email accounts, and the immediate cessation of any online research, getting your internet up and running again is vital.  

There are many potential reasons for your Wi-Fi network not being able to perform its basic functions, including an ISP (internet service provider) outage, the need to perform a hard reset on your modem, failure to update firmware, or even being compromised by a virus or other forms of malware. You should perform any necessary troubleshooting and maintenance activities to determine the root cause of the employee PC problem to resume operations as soon as possible. 

Slow Internet Connections Causing Delays and Frustration 

Some common PC errors employees experience with the internet are out of their control, but many possible reasons could lead to slower internet speeds. Such errors generally manifest as long buffering times for audio and video files or websites taking unusually long to load. This may lead an employee to blame their internet connection. However, while the problems with internet speed could be caused by errors from the system or the PC itself, many user errors could achieve the same effect. 

While you may be familiar with the detrimental impact of accumulating downloads of temporary files and how to clean the cache on your preferred web browser, you should not assume that your employees have the same knowledge. Showing the individual how to perform these tasks can help prevent the reoccurrence of these problems in the future. Holding regular technology training sessions and creating a manual for common tech issues will also go a long way. 

Documents Getting Stuck in the Printer Queue or Not Being Received at All 

Problems with communal printers can raise the ire of employees and individuals like few other technical issues, so teaching employees how to resolve PC issues with printing can be invaluable. One of the most common problems with printers tends to arise from businesses using multiple printers and simply connecting to the wrong device.  

It may also be worth performing a hard reset on the printer or all-in-one device, inspecting it for physical issues like being out of ink or paper jams, and whether the printer displays any error codes. Your employees should also be aware of how to perform the troubleshooting process on their PCs to see if the problem can be fixed via automatic processes. If this does not solve the problem, it may be necessary to involve your IT department for technical support, like checking if the software drivers are updated and working correctly. 

Having A Monitor or Display Freeze Suddenly During a Project 

Few things can completely derail a detailed project faster than having your PC suddenly freeze up and refuse to operate normally. While you may or may not be able to move the mouse arrow, your apps and settings will not close, open, or otherwise respond to your inputs or entreaties. While this issue may resolve itself after an indeterminate period, sudden freezes can also result from a PC being compromised by malware or simply not having sufficient RAM (random access memory) to accomplish tasks efficiently. 

Depending on which program your employee was using when the screen froze, freezing could result in losing the document or project along with valuable person-hours. Some apps like those in Microsoft Office Suite offer users the ability to recover documents that have been closed abruptly, but your workers should know to regularly save their projects to avoid relying on any auto-save functions. 

Common employee PC problems are inevitable, so consider taking the time to train and inform your workers to minimize such incidents. Check out our other articles on recognizing and resolving PC problems so you can get everyone back on track. 

About Dan Martin: Daniel Martin is a technology researcher and writer with more than a decade of experience. He is a professional librarian and an experienced tech teacher, writer and blogger. Specializing in technology, Dan has taught courses in technology and writing at the college level, developed web pages for businesses and higher educational institutions, written on tech topics for leading national publications and created numerous how-to guides.