There are many places on the Internet where you can go to get help with your computer when it will not work. There are Forums, Email Lists, and Newsgroups where many technically proficient people answer questions that other less experienced computer users pose when they have problems.
As is often heard on many of the following sources, "Google is your best friend.", and a good first place to begin looking for an answer to your problems, is on Google's search interface with a well formulated search term which relates to any error messages you may be receiving. Once you have done a thorough search, and are still lost, or in need of help, then try one of the following places.
This first section is a collection of forums sites. Computer forums typically have you post your questions via their web interface in your web browser, and maintain an online archive of past postings you can search.
This first section is a collection of forums sites. Computer forums typically have you post your questions via their web interface in your web browser, and maintain an online archive of past postings you can search.
Bleeping Computer - Computer Help and Discussion This site has many forums on a variety of computer subjects. It is a web based group of forums with around 250,000 registered users. They have forums for all of the different operating systems, hardware forums, many forums on different types of software, audio and video, programming, Internet, networking, web site design, virus, spyware, and security forums, and some general chat forums as well. They also have tutorials, and a file identification database. When someone replies to a thread you are participating in a notification email is sent to you, so you don't have to keep going back to the site to see if there were any replies.
Linux Forums This site specializes in forums for the Linux operating system, and has forums for many of the different distributions of Linux. They also have forums on hardware, software, security, Linux programming, games, and networking to mention a few. The forums are web based, but when someone replies to a question you have posed you are sent a notification email.
PC Help Forums This site has forums on a variety of computer subjects and currently has around 30,000 members. Like the two above forum sites they have forums on many computer related subjects. They even have a forum for advertising your web site.
CNET Forums This forum site once again has many, many forums divided by general topic. If it's computer related you can find a forum to discuss it in here. Since it's CNET, they also have a software download section, and a link to CNET Television.
Tech Help Forum This site also has a variety of computer help forums you can participate in. They only have around 4800 members currently.
Garden Web Forums This site only has three computer related forums, Computer Help, HTML & Web Authoring, and Graphics and Scanning. The forum interface isn't as polished as the preceding forum sites above. They have many, many forums on non computer related subjects as well.
Computer Help Forums This forum site has many forums on computer related subjects, and also has rss feeds you can sign up for in most of their forums. It has a nice looking interface, and even gives you the ability to select from three different skins to change the look of the site.
Computer Forums This forum site currently has around 35,000 members. Their computer hardware forums are broken down by specialization in particular parts of a PC. They also have operating system groups, a digital imaging forum, games and game console forum, general software, security, an internet discussion forum, and they even have a forum for you to try to sell your computer hardware in.
Geeks to Go Forums This is another well organized forum collection with over 250,000 members. They have forums on all of the popular topics, and have a specialized forum for the posting of Hijack This logs so they may be analyzed to help you clean up your infected computer.
Bash Scripting Forums This site has forums which discuss the various aspects of scripting in the bash shell under Linux. Scripting in bash is similar to writing batch files under dos, but bash scripts can be made to do much more powerful things than batch language can.
Email Help Lists
This next section has links to email lists. Email lists send you all emails that the members of the group post, to your personal email address, and to post back you simply reply to an email. Most email lists have moderators who keep the members in line, so there is a minimum of bickering and arguing in these groups. Most of them also provide an archive which is accessible via a web browser to look up old messages.
This next section has links to email lists. Email lists send you all emails that the members of the group post, to your personal email address, and to post back you simply reply to an email. Most email lists have moderators who keep the members in line, so there is a minimum of bickering and arguing in these groups. Most of them also provide an archive which is accessible via a web browser to look up old messages.
A-1 Computer Tech This is an email list hosted by Yahoo groups. It generates a moderate amount of traffic so it's not too hard to keep up with.
Simply Computers This is another email list group hosted by Yahoo. It currently has around 14,000 members, and the traffic is moderately high volume.
Ubuntu Users This email list specializes in the Ubuntu operating system. It is a high volume list that generates around 50 to 200 emails a day.
PC Build mailing list - This is a quote from their front page: "PCBUILD is a mailing list devoted to people interested in building, upgrading and repairing personal computers in the PC format." This is a computer hardware discussion list that I've been a member of for a long time.
They have many good members who are able to answer your questions, and the list is moderated, which means there are no flame wars, or insults allowed. Any level of computer user can benefit from belonging to this list, and any level of computer user can be found using it.
PC Soft This email list is for the discussion of software related issues. It currently has 2100 members, and generates a low amount of mail. It is the sister list to PC Build above.
PC Helpers This is a low volume email list that aims to help with PC problems.
Win Home This is a Windows discussion only email list with a fairly low volume of messages.
Newsgroups
This next section is for newsgroups. Newsgroups are similar to email lists, with the exception that all of the posts to the group are kept on the news servers, and you use your email client, or newsreader program to access the messages. You don't actually download the messages, until you open each of them for reading in your newsreader, or email client. They are usually archived on the web as well, and those archives can be accessed via their web interfaces in your web browser.
This next section is for newsgroups. Newsgroups are similar to email lists, with the exception that all of the posts to the group are kept on the news servers, and you use your email client, or newsreader program to access the messages. You don't actually download the messages, until you open each of them for reading in your newsreader, or email client. They are usually archived on the web as well, and those archives can be accessed via their web interfaces in your web browser.
If you're lucky, your isp provides free access to a news server, but fewer and fewer of them are providing this service. This is unfortunate, as there are around 30,000 different groups, on widely different subjects, available on these big news servers, and the only other option for accessing those groups, is via paid subscription to newer third party, pay for play news servers, which have subsequently become popular.
There are however, quite a few free news servers, that are hosted by software and hardware companies, where issues with their own products are discussed by users, and sometimes company representatives.
Hardware Newsgroups This is a nice list of newsgroups sponsored by hardware manufacturers. This very long page also lists newsgroups, ftp sites, and web sites for many major hardware, software, and operating system manufacturers.
Hardware Newsgroups This How to Fix Computers forum site provides a web interface to quite a few Usenet Hardware oriented newsgroups. These groups are users helping users with particular hardware questions, and not necessarily manufacturer sponsored groups.
Microsoft News Groups This link is to the web interface for the Microsoft newgroups, of which there are around 2000 groups specializing in different areas of Microsoft products, and in many languages. You may also access these groups with your news reader by setting it to retrieve messages from the msnews.microsoft.com news server.
Keep in mind that these groups are un-moderated, so there is some bickering, and bad behavior in these groups, from people who don't seem to have anything better to do than cause trouble. There are also many Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Players) participating in these newsgroups, from whom you can get the straight scoop on all things Windows.
Specialized Public NNTP News Servers This is a list of news servers which offer free access, and are the news servers of individual software companies, and as such specialize in the discussion of their own products.
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