If the eyes are the windows to one’s soul, then the monitor can be the window to your computer’s hardware issues. Here are two examples of what a monitor revealed, and how we found their revelations. It wasn’t as high-tech as you might think.

Our first instance involved a panicked client with a year-old Mac laptop that was hooked up to an external monitor. They said the computer was making a noise intermittently, and they were afraid it was the Mac’s version of a death rattle. We have to admit that the noise confounded us, too.

We did a search on the monitor make and model. Virtually all monitors have a single button that you need to push multiple times to make adjustments, and half the time, the user doesn’t know what adjustments are being made – or not being made. In this case, the monitor has a feedback feature that causes it to make a sound when it wakes up. That is scary until you learn about it; then it’s annoying.

We worked the button to shut off the monitor sounds.

In our second instance, a client thought they were hacked because they kept seeing a message in the corner of the screen. We remoted into their system but never saw that problem. Nor did we find any evidence that they had been hacked or compromised.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that when we look at your computer remotely, we don’t see your monitor screen. We see a representation that enables us to see what’s going on inside your computer. We didn’t see anything on our view, and the client couldn’t see any messages because they saw the same view we did.

Yet the problem persisted. So, we decided to do a FaceTime call, which enabled us to see what the client saw during their normal work. We saw that the monitor was throwing off alerts. We did some research and found the monitor was from 2006. The monitor owed the client nothing. We ordered two new monitors for the client and installed them. The client got better performance from their new monitors and screens with larger viewing areas.

The lesson learned from these experiences is that if we can’t remotely see the problem you reported, it’s likely a hardware issue. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us if you see something odd. We can confirm if it’s a hardware issue and help you solve it or replace it. And if it is a software issue, we can take care of that during the remote session.