Fix Your PC. Free Tools & Guides.

Fix Your PC. Free Tools & Guides.

Step-by-step troubleshooting guides and simple utilities for everyday computer problems — no downloads, no sign-up, nothing to install.

Search runs on this page and jumps straight to the matching guide or tool.

What’s wrong with your PC? Tap a symptom — we’ll take you to the fix.

Windows Repair

Blue screens, failed updates, slow startups and the built-in repair commands that actually fix them.

Browse guides →

Laptop Troubleshooting

Won’t turn on, overheating, dying batteries and black screens — worked through in the right order.

Browse guides →

Free Network Tools

Decode ipconfig output, plan subnets, check Wi-Fi channels and test your connection — right in the browser.

Open tools →

Best PC Accessories

The few accessories worth buying for repairs and upgrades — and the specs that actually matter.

See picks →
Step-by-step guides

Popular Fixes, In the Right Order

Each guide starts with the two-minute checks and only moves to tools and parts if those fail. Pick your symptom — the steps are inside.

Windows Repair15–30 min · No tools needed

Fix a Blue Screen (BSOD) Step by Step

A blue screen is Windows protecting itself from bad data. The stop code on screen names the culprit — work through these in order.

  1. Note the stop code. Photograph the blue screen. Codes like MEMORY_MANAGEMENT or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL point at RAM or drivers — look yours up in the BSOD tool above.
  2. Undo the last change. New driver, update or USB device just before the crashes started? Unplug it, or roll the driver back in Device Manager.
  3. Boot Safe Mode. Hold Shift while clicking Restart → Troubleshoot → Startup Settings → Safe Mode. If it’s stable there, the cause is a driver or startup app, not hardware.
  4. Repair Windows files. In an admin Command Prompt run sfc /scannow, then DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. These fix the corrupt system files behind a large share of repeat blue screens.
  5. Test the RAM. Run Windows Memory Diagnostic (type mdsched in the Start menu). Any errors mean a failing stick — reseat it, or replace it; no software fix exists.
  6. Check the drive. Run chkdsk /scan. Then check drive health in CrystalDiskInfo — a “Caution” or “Bad” status means back up now and plan a replacement.
Laptop Troubleshooting10–20 min · No tools needed

PC Won’t Turn On: 10 Checks Before You Panic

Completely dead — no lights, no fan, no beep — is usually power, not a dead motherboard. Most “dead” machines come back within these checks.

  1. Confirm the wall power. Plug a phone charger into the same socket. Check the power strip switch and, on desktops, the switch on the PSU itself.
  2. Try a different cable and adapter. Laptop chargers fail silently all the time. Match the voltage on the label if you borrow one.
  3. Drain the leftover charge. Unplug everything, hold the power button for 30 seconds, then plug in and try again. This clears a latched power state — the single most common fix.
  4. Remove the battery if it comes out. Try starting on adapter power alone; a shorted battery can block boot entirely.
  5. Watch for any sign of life. A charging LED, fan twitch or beep means power is arriving and the fault is downstream — display, RAM or board.
  6. Rule out the screen. Shine a torch at the display at an angle; a faint image means the backlight died, not the PC. Plug in an external monitor to confirm.
  7. Reseat the RAM (desktop / serviceable laptop). Unplug, open the panel, pop both clips, reseat the sticks until they click. Loose RAM is a top cause of “no display, fans spin.”
  8. Strip it to minimum. Disconnect drives, USB devices and extra cards. If it starts, reconnect one at a time to find the part that blocks it.
Free Network Tools10 min · No tools needed

Wi-Fi Connected but No Internet

“Connected, no internet” means your PC talks to the router but the path beyond it is broken. Three quick tests tell you which side is at fault.

  1. Ping the router. Run ping 192.168.1.1 (your gateway — find it with the ipconfig Decoder above). Replies under 10 ms mean your Wi-Fi link is fine.
  2. Ping the internet by number. Run ping 1.1.1.1. If this works but websites don’t load, it’s DNS — set your DNS servers to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 in the adapter settings.
  3. If both pings fail, restart in order. Modem off 30 seconds → on → wait for solid lights → router on → then the PC. Order matters: the router must find the modem already up.
  4. Forget and rejoin the network. Settings → Network → Wi-Fi → Manage known networks → Forget, then reconnect. This clears a corrupted profile or stale IP.
  5. Reset the network stack. Admin Command Prompt: netsh winsock reset and ipconfig /flushdns, then restart. This fixes the “worked yesterday” cases after updates.
  6. Still stuck? Test with a phone hotspot. If the PC works there, the router or line is at fault — not the PC.
Laptop Troubleshooting30–45 min · Screwdriver + compressed air

Laptop Overheating? Clean the Fan Before Anything Else

Nine overheating laptops out of ten are choked with dust, not broken. Fans get loud, the keyboard deck gets hot, then the machine throttles or shuts off mid-task.

  1. Confirm it’s heat. Install HWMonitor and watch temperatures while you work. Sustained CPU readings above 95 °C, or shutdowns under load, confirm it.
  2. Clear the outside first. With the laptop off, blow short bursts of compressed air into the exhaust vents at an angle. Never spin the fan freely with air — hold it still with a toothpick through the grille.
  3. Open the bottom panel. Screws out (note their lengths), panel pried gently from a corner. Photograph before you touch anything inside.
  4. Clean the heatsink fins. The dust mat hides where the fan meets the copper fins. Brush it out with a soft anti-static brush and blow through the fins from inside out.
  5. Check the fan spins freely. A fan that wobbles, grinds or won’t spin needs replacing — they are model-specific and inexpensive, but order by the part number printed on the fan.
  6. Repaste only if cleaning didn’t help. If temperatures stay high with clean fins, the thermal paste has dried out. This is a careful job — old paste off with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol, a pea-sized dot of new paste, heatsink screws tightened in an X pattern.
Windows Repair20 min · No tools needed

Windows Running Very Slow? The 20-Minute Tune-Up

Slowness is almost never “the PC is old.” It’s a nearly full drive, a pile of startup apps, or an old spinning hard drive. Fix them in this order.

  1. Find the bottleneck. Open Task Manager → Performance while the PC feels slow. Whichever of CPU, Memory or Disk sits at 100% is your problem — fix that one.
  2. Free up the system drive. Windows needs breathing room: keep at least 15% of the C: drive free. Run Storage Sense (Settings → Storage) and clear Downloads and old temp files.
  3. Cut startup apps. Task Manager → Startup apps. Disable everything that isn’t security or drivers — chat apps, updaters and game launchers can all start on demand instead.
  4. Check for a failing drive. If Disk shows 100% with tiny transfer rates, the drive may be dying. Check its health status before spending time on software fixes.
  5. The real cure for an old machine: an SSD. If the PC still boots from a spinning hard drive, cloning it to an SSD is the single biggest speed upgrade there is — boot times typically drop from minutes to seconds. See the picks below.
Windows Repair10 min · No tools needed

No Sound After a Windows Update

Updates love to swap the default output device or replace a working audio driver. Sound usually returns within the first three steps.

  1. Check the output device. Click the speaker icon in the taskbar and look at the device name above the volume slider. After updates it often points at a monitor or HDMI output with no speakers — switch it back to your speakers or headphones.
  2. Run the built-in troubleshooter. Settings → System → Sound → Troubleshoot. It catches muted services and wrong formats automatically.
  3. Restart the audio service. Press Win + R, type services.msc, find Windows Audio, right-click → Restart. Do the same for Windows Audio Endpoint Builder.
  4. Roll back the driver. Device Manager → Sound → your device → Properties → Driver → Roll Back Driver. If the button is greyed out, uninstall the device and restart — Windows will reinstall a clean driver.
  5. Check the app itself. Sound in the browser but not one app (or the reverse) means per-app volume: Settings → Sound → Volume mixer, and unmute the offender.
Upgrades1–2 hrs · Screwdriver + USB adapter

SSD Upgrade Guide: Clone Your Old Drive in an Hour

The biggest speed upgrade an older PC can get. Cloning copies Windows, apps and files exactly as they are — no reinstalling, no lost settings.

  1. Pick the right SSD. Laptops and older desktops take a 2.5″ SATA SSD; newer machines with an M.2 slot can use a much faster NVMe drive. Match your old drive’s capacity or go bigger — cloning to a smaller drive is painful. Picks are in the Accessories section below.
  2. Back up anything irreplaceable first. Cloning is reliable, but the one time it fails is the time you didn’t back up. Copy documents and photos to an external drive or cloud storage.
  3. Connect the new SSD. Desktops: mount it in a spare bay or leave it resting safely and connect SATA + power. Laptops with one slot: use a USB-to-SATA adapter (about $10) for the clone, then swap the drives.
  4. Clone with the maker’s software. Crucial, Samsung and WD all offer free cloning tools (Acronis / Data Migration / Acronis for WD). Choose the old drive as source, the SSD as target, and let it run — a typical 500 GB clone takes 30–60 minutes.
  5. Swap and boot. Shut down, fit the SSD in place of the old drive, and start up. First boot can take a few minutes while Windows adjusts; after that, expect boot times in seconds, not minutes.
  6. Check TRIM is on. Run fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify — a result of 0 means TRIM is active, which keeps the SSD fast over its life. Then keep the old drive untouched for a week as your fallback before wiping it for extra storage.
Free tools · run in your browser

Free Network & PC Tools

Small utilities that do one job well. Most run entirely in this page — anything you paste into the decoder, calculator or password generator never leaves your device. The two exceptions say so on their tabs: the Speed Test and the My IP lookup have to contact an outside server to work.

ipconfig Decoder

On the problem PC, press Win + R, type cmd, run ipconfig /all, then paste the output here. We translate it into plain English and flag the usual faults.


    


    
    

    
    

    
    

    
    

    
    

    
    
  


  
  

    

      Buying guides
      
Best PC Accessories & Upgrade Picks

      
Short verdicts, no fluff: what to buy for each job, the spec that matters, and a realistic price to pay. Prices checked October 2026 — expect small regional differences.

    

    

      

        
Best Budget SSD — Crucial MX500 1TB
≈ $65

        
The default upgrade for any PC still booting from a hard drive. Proven controller, DRAM cache (many budget rivals skip it), and cloning software included in the box.

        
SATA 2.5″Up to 560 MB/s5-yr warrantyBest for: old PC revival

      

      

        
Best NVMe SSD — WD Black SN770 1TB
≈ $75

        
PCIe 4.0 speed without the flagship price. The pick for modern laptops and desktops with an M.2 slot — cold boots and game loads stop being a thing you notice.

        
M.2 2280 · PCIe 4.0Up to 5,150 MB/sBest for: new builds & laptops

      

      

        
Best Monitor for Home Office — Dell S2721QS 27″ 4K
≈ $300

        
Crisp text at arm’s length, accurate colors out of the box, and a height-adjustable stand — the three things that matter for eight hours a day of documents and spreadsheets.

        
27″ IPS 4KHeight / tilt standHDMI + DisplayPort

      

      

        
Best Laptop Stand — Rain Design mStand
≈ $45

        
One solid piece of aluminium that raises the screen to eye level and doubles as a heatsink. Pair it with any external keyboard and your neck will notice within a day.

        
Solid aluminiumRaises screen ≈15 cmFits 12–17″ laptops

      

      

        
Best Repair Toolkit — iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
≈ $75

        
Every bit a laptop or PC repair actually needs, including the odd security screws phone and laptop makers love. Buy once; it outlasts several machines.

        
64 precision bitsSpudgers & suction toolsLifetime warranty

      

      
      
      

        
Best USB-C Dock — CalDigit TS4
≈ $380

        
The one-cable desk: drives two external monitors, charges the laptop at 98W and still has ports left over. Not cheap — but it replaces three cheaper docks that half-work.

        
Thunderbolt 418 ports98W chargingDual 4K displays

      

    

  


  
  

    

      Quick reference
      
Windows Repair Commands Worth Knowing

      
Run these from an administrator Command Prompt (right-click Start → Terminal (Admin)). They are built into Windows — no downloads involved.

    

    

      

        
CommandWhat it doesUse it when

        
          
sfc /scannowScans protected system files and replaces corrupt copies from the local cache.Random crashes, odd errors, features that stopped working.

          
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealthRepairs the Windows component store that SFC draws from, using Windows Update as the source.SFC reports it “could not fix” some files.

          
chkdsk /scanOnline scan of the file system for errors, without unmounting the drive.Disk at 100%, files that won’t open, after a forced shutdown.

          
ipconfig /release → /renewDrops the current IP address and asks the router for a fresh one.“No internet” with a 169.254.x.x address, after moving networks.

          
ipconfig /flushdnsClears the local DNS cache so names resolve fresh.One site won’t load while everything else works.

          
netsh winsock resetResets the network socket catalogue to a clean state (restart required).Network broke right after an update or VPN/antivirus install.

          
mdschedLaunches Windows Memory Diagnostic to test RAM on the next restart.Blue screens with memory-related stop codes.

          
msconfigSystem Configuration: clean-boot options and service control.Hunting which startup service causes a crash.

        
      

    

  


  
  

    

      
Need a human? On-Site IT Support in Guangzhou

      
Some problems shouldn’t be a DIY project. gzith.com is run by a Guangzhou-based IT support team that comes to your office, hotel or exhibition booth — same-day across the city, English-speaking engineers, one clear quote before any work starts.

      WhatsApp us
      Email hutaodewang@gmail.com
    

    
    
      
  • Foreign companies — office setup, ongoing maintenance, staff laptops & networks
    • 
      
  • Canton Fair exhibitors — booth Wi-Fi, demo PCs, printers & on-call help during the fair
    • 
      
  • Repairs & upgrades — diagnostics, SSD/RAM upgrades, data recovery first aid
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  • Hours — every day 08:00–23:00, across Guangzhou
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One useful fix in your inbox, every week

      
No spam, no “top 10” listicles — one real repair or tool, explained properly. Tap below and your mail app opens with everything filled in; just press send.

    

    
    
We reply from the same address to confirm you’re on the list.

  











	
	



	
	



			

			
		
	



	
 
	


	





	
                
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