I can’t seem to find similar opinions out there so I am feeling like this belongs more in r/aita but are does anyone have a good channel on YouTube for people who teach others how to fix PCs? Everything popping into my algorithm results are just people who guess and swap parts.
“PC won’t turn on? Swap the Motherboard, CPU, Case, Power Supply, and CPU cooler (so only really keeping the SSD and RAM)!” This mentality doesn’t teach newer generation of PC enthusiasts much and gives the impression that taking care of issues themselves is costly.
The “Fixing a Viewer’s Broken PC” string of videos by Greg Salazar are exactly what I am talking about as not being helpful. I’ve never once heard him mention an Event Log or do any investigation.
Does that sort of diagnosis even apply anymore? If reinstalling Windows, setting BIOS to fail safe, and reseating all devices doesn’t fix the issue you’re looking at hardware replacement.
To answer your question, I’m partial to Jayztwocents.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jayztwocents+fix
thats what you do though, unless its an obvious error, or windows event viewer can help point you in the right direction, you are left to just try swapping shit out to see what fixes your issue.
What you posted seems a little extreme for the beginning, but there are plenty of how-to’s that teach you the basics from the beginning, honestly just the first set of videos from an A+ video. Won’t turn on? First thing you do is unplug everything, give it a couple minutes, try it again. Still won’t? Same thing, but hold down the power button while off and unplugged (so it discharges the capacitors), then try again. Still no? remove cmos battery and do the above…I’m not sure exactly what videos you’re looking for, but there are definitely lots of them out there. Sometimes it’s a matter of asking the right question.
Man I’m really curious if something comes up. Over here in my country, the channels that are trending most are car mechanics channel doing deep dives into engines and chassis and fixing the customer cars. And they are rightfully popular. You learn a lot from them and the professionalism of the mechanics are just great to watch. Wonder if something if this sort exists for computers as well.
If that is what you’re looking for then I’d recommend watching multiple PC build videos, but not some few-minute montage ones. Paul’s Hardware, for example, will, from time to time, do something along these lines where he goes right into installing the OS. Hardware Unboxed sometimes and even Optimum Tech will occasionally do this, too. But in the case of the latter even he can get a little too montage’y at times. These videos usually provide discussion into why parts were chosen, etc. That’s about as deep-dive as a normal user needs and should give them the foundation they need for using observation to help diagnose things by elimination and/or isolation.
Anything more detailed is what long form reviews and architecture explainers are for when a processor or graphics card comes out. But after that is usually to the Reddit-mines to look for anybody talking about specific problems with a specific thing and/or it’s firmware/software at a given time, unfortunately. Too many devices from too many manufacturers with too many things that can individually go wrong.
There’s a chance you may already be seeing/reading these things you seek, but aren’t quite recognizing them for what they are. Of course like car repair (and the modification/performance scene), though, professionalism will vary.
How would he look into event viewer when he specifically states he wants to troubleshoot pcs which have outright hardware issues ? Also 2/3rds of his videos are systems which won’t boot, you can’t get into event viewer without booting up now can you ?
I missed the part where he stated he only wants to address confirmed hardware issues.
I haven’t gotten through all his videos but I’m betting that he hasn’t opened event viewer in any of them.
In a case where it doesn’t boot/no video, are troubleshooting steps that can be taken if you don’t have readily available spare parts which would be educational. For example jumpering a power supply if you don’t have multimeter, etc.
He does what you are saying , his old videos show the whole process . The thing is no one is here for that in every video
Tronics Fix might be your guy. He does electronics repairs, which sounds like it’s at least related to what you’re looking for.
Other than that sort of repair work, what you’re describing is just the basics of hardware troubleshooting. Identify potential points of failure and swap them out for known-good units until you figure out what caused the problem. From there most people (and even most shops) will just replace the faulty component either from their stock or with an RMA.
Event viewer and logs like that often times take more time than they’re worth when you can just swap parts one by one in some logical order until you hit the solution. I used to do repair/troubleshooting as a side gig when I worked at Gigabyte doing board design, and my steps whenever possible were to just swap parts for known-goods. I only got out the logging tools if something was super weird and rare or I couldn’t source a component to swap quickly, which was also rare as I collected a lot of different hardware over time.
Beyond that I might try to repair a broken board if it’s something simple like a broken header or port or something, but if you ever saw me doing a whole VRM swap or BGA soldering work, it was probably to revive something special, or too expensive to just replace.
“PC won’t turn on? Swap the Motherboard, CPU, Case, Power Supply, and CPU cooler (so only really keeping the SSD and RAM)!” This mentality doesn’t teach newer generation of PC enthusiasts much and gives the impression that taking care of issues themselves is costly.
Well it can be costly, yes. People, wrongly, state that building a PC is like Lego for adults or some such nonsense while completely ignoring the miserable reality of the software running on the machine or that a percentage of hardware released out into the wild is expected to fail by the manufacturer. One’s Lego model doesn’t suddenly stop working one day.
I’ve been using/building PC’s for almost 3 decades now and I’d not wish a person to have to just blinding build, operate, and/or repair a PC (or Mac) without knowing someone who could help them who is literally near by or a phone call away. It’s just not realistic for most of society. So I see little profitability in going through all of the steps and commitment one has to make to run a successful, profitable YouTube channel on the subject.
Hell, even a YouTube series on how to properly search for information (or how to phrase one’s question about their problem) on Google and Reddit would be better, in my opinion, than a rando doing “PC repair basics!” on YouTube alone. But even the latter is the most I would expect. Beyond that it seems to go right to KrisFix or Louis Rossman, doesn’t it?
Besides, all one can really rely on is generic observation, testing (regardless of method), repair attempt, and confirmation that the problem is gone like any trade school teaches for any repair trade/profession.
There is just no tablet of commandments for PC repair because each person has different knowledge and tools/parts available to them. This also is completely ignoring the cost of tools used to do a repair/build. I know everyone is like "you just need a Phillips screw driver!" (to strawman like you have in the quote), most of the time, but that’s not what my work bench looks like after I finish a build or do a repair sometimes. A screwdriver is sometimes a few hundred short of the tools and other things I end up using be they pen magnets, zip ties, a Dremel, or a even a known-good PSU (with known good cables!).
If you’re wanting to learn how to fix pc’s then youtubes not where you should start. Ironically one of the most important skills you need to learn is how to google. Google may bring you to youtube sometimes but here are just too many niche esoteric problems for youtube to be useful outside of very specific solutions. Also IMO event viewer is rarely useful.
If you go back in the early days of youtube, people were figuring out what to do with it.
Some of it was educational and more technical instruction from a training perspective.
But as you can see, it’s now about entertaining and making ad revenue. You are having a difficult time finding educational channels because they don’t really exist anymore. They don’t make money or aren’t entertaining. You have to get off YouTube for what you want. You have to make your own channel if you want that sort of thing.