Fig.1: checking the Device Manager will quickly reveal if there are any resource conflicts or hardware problems.

When a fault or a glitch appears in your PC's operating system, the first question you must ask yourself is "How far am I willing to go to fix this problem?" After all, many problems can be fixed simply by reinstalling the operating system and provided you have backed up important files, there is nothing wrong with this.

However, this method does have two important drawbacks: (1) it leaves you none the wiser as to what actually caused the problem in the first place; and (2) you risk losing settings and software updates that you may have spent a lot of time getting right. As a result, many people prefer to troubleshoot any problems as they arise, if only to satisfy their own curiosity or to meet a challenge.

And - dare I say it? - fixing a crashed computer can actually be a lot of fun.

Desktop folders won't open

In this article, I am going to give you the step-by-step process I used to fix a strange fault in my own computer. This fault would always appear after what appeared to be a normal boot-up. Quite simply, folders on my desktop wouldn't open when double-clicked. Instead, the cursor would bring up the "hourglass" icon and just "hang" there.

What's more, when ever I gave the computer the three finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) to bring up the Task Manager, there would be no application running in the foreground to turn off. And the taskbar at the bottom indicated that CPU utilisation was running at 100%!

So what was causing this problem? I hadn't added any new software lately; nor had the computer recently crashed or done anything else unusual.