How to Fix Common Internet Problems Yourself

Computing and information technology (IT) problems can be one of the most frustrating problems facing small business owners that use IT. Many people face problems with their Internet connections. Small business owners rely on the Internet for their daily communication needs. If there is a problem it can delay business and may cause loss to business. These business owners do not have dedicated IT staff and have nowhere to turn to except to the customer service of their ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Although the ISP customer service may be helpful, the operators manning them are small in number and unable to cope up with the deluge of enquiries and tech support questions. This can mean that it may take several minutes or hours spent on hold when trying to speak with technical support. But when armed with some education and knowledge, these small business owners can be able to fix some of the simple problems themselves. They then don't need to rely on customer service entirely. In this article we look at some common Internet problems and how they can be solved quite easily.

Home users and small business owners who depend on email for communications may face difficulties when it is not working as expected. Before contacting customer service there are a few steps that can be taken to attempt to fix the problem yourself. The two common problems are being unable to open attachments and receive or send emails.

If an email attachment is not opening properly it is possible the user is trying to open the attachment in an incorrect program. Try opening the attachment in a text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad. Both are built-in to Windows. This may give clues as to what application is to be used to open the attachment. Try contacting the sender of the email and ask him or her about what application was used to create the attachment. If the application in question is available on your local system, try saving the attachment locally and then attempt to open it using the 'Open With' option that appears when you right click on the file. You may want to set the correct application to open a particular file extension type by using the 'File Types' tab of the 'Folder Options' dialog box in Windows Explorer.

A difficulty or issue in sending or receiving email may involve slightly more complex steps. Try these few steps before contacting tech support. First verify whether you are actually connected to the Internet. Check to see that the modem lights are indeed on. Attempt to disconnect and reconnect again. You may have also run out of space on your mailbox. Always prune your mailbox deleting unnecessary or large emails. Save important emails to your hard drive and then delete them from the mailbox. This will free up space in the mailbox. If you are unable to login to the email server, verify if the user name and password for POP/SMTP authentication are correct. The user name is usually not case sensitive but the password is.

Virus infections are a common problem affecting home users and small business owners. It is easy to fall prey to a virus infection by opening an unsuspecting email attachment from a questionable sender. The infection is usually the result of non-existent antivirus software or antivirus software that has not been updated with the latest virus signature base. You should always have proper antivirus software on your system and there are many that are available for free, such as from AVG. If the suspected virus infection is not detected by the antivirus software however, then it may be time to call the tech support.

Another common problem is that you are unable to access a particular website. If other websites are functioning correctly, verify whether the URL you are using is correct. If it is, there may be problems with the web server itself. Wait for sometime and try to access the website again. If no websites are accessible, then try to reboot the computer and then reconnect to the Internet. If this doesn't fix the problem, contact ISP tech support and see if they are having problems at their end.

Another common problem when accessing websites may be parental control settings. Internet Explorer can be set to deny access to groups of websites based on adult or offensive website content. If this is the suspected cause of the problems, then try tweaking the settings in the 'Content' tab of the 'Internet Options' dialog box in your Internet Explorer, accessed using Tools menu. You can experiment with various content settings as it is not dangerous to play around with it.

Though this list of common Internet problems is not exhaustive, it does provide the reader with knowledge of the most common problems and fixes. This can give the home user or the small business owner a few tools to fix problems by themselves rather than waiting for hours for tech support to arrive.