Your computer is not something to be feared.
Hi everyone. Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com.
So some time ago,
one of my assistants asked me about one of the questions we got asked.
Why didn't they just try this?
And I have to admit, it is kind of frustrating for me from time
to time when I get questions that would be so incredibly easily answered if
the person asking the question just gave it a try.
But I also understand why not everybody feels safe doing that.
They're afraid.
They're afraid of hurting their computer.
They're afraid of damaging it.
They're afraid of losing data.
They're afraid of doing something.
They're just afraid.
But the bottom line is there's really no need for that fear.
I focus on this today because it's one of those situations where
giving something a try is generally much safer than I think people realize.
And it's much quicker than waiting for me
or for anyone else to get around to answering your question.
I'll be honest,
for a lot of these questions that fall into this category, what happens if
my solution, how I get my answer is I go give it a try,
and that's something that you can do just as safely and a lot quicker.
What people are afraid of. I get it.
What people are afraid of is they're afraid of breaking something.
What you probably don't understand is just how extremely unlikely that really is.
Yes, you could lose some data.
Yes, you could change a program configuration.
Sure, in the absolute worst case, you could render your machine unbootable.
But that is so incredibly unlikely.
Now, to be clear, if you were intending to break your machine, that's actually easy.
I know 1000 ways to go in and break things such that the machine is unbootable or
something isn't going to work or whatever, but that's with intent.
If you're just trying to get stuff done, if you're just trying to see what happens,
if this feature or that feature or that function or whatever, this menu,
that menu, et cetera, what they do, will they do what you expect?
What happens when you try something?
If you're doing that in a constructive way?
Honestly, it's difficult to really, truly break things.
Now, I do want to be clear.
I'm not talking about hardware.
It's next to impossible to break the hardware to break your computer
by experimenting with the software you have installed.
Play around with Windows,
play around with your applications, do whatever it is you want to do.
You're not going to break the hardware.
The computer will be fine. Yeah.
The worst case scenario, the extremely unlikely worst case scenario
is, as I described, rendering your machine unbootable.
That's just software.
Software can be reinstalled.
Windows can be reinstalled.
Your applications can be reinstalled.
Your data can be recovered from backups, which I'll talk about in a minute.
The point being that you will not
physically harm your computer by experimenting.
The worst you'll do is screw up some
configuration, and even then, that's all recoverable.
The problem, of course,
is that there is so much fear since people don't understand exactly what the machine
is doing or why things are the way they are or how things are designed.
I understand that it can be kind of sort of scary for a while.
The problem is that we are all afraid of what we don't understand.
And it's very easy to not understand your computer,
Windows, the software you're trying to use, the websites you're trying to visit.
There's a lot to not understand.
But the one thing I think you can understand is that it's very,
very difficult to break something unless you're intending to break something.
Like I said, yes, there are absolutely horror stories out there.
You hear horrible things about people breaking God knows what right.
But what's important to realize is that the horror stories make news
not because they're common.
If they were common, it wouldn't be newsworthy.
It's because they are uncommon.
It's because they are uncommon and in some cases, severe.
Most of the time, most things just work.
And that is especially true for your computer.
I would encourage you to experiment, to learn by experimenting.
Now, protection from the Worst let's say that you're really scared of rendering
your computer unbootable or breaking some software on your machine so that you can't
use it after you've run your little experiment.
That is so easy to protect yourself from a backup, take a full system image backup.
In fact, if you're doing it like I
suggest, every day or so, you're already protected.
Because the absolute worst case scenario,
you are one of the very few people who actually break their system so hard
that it no longer boots, or that your application no longer works,
or that a file you had yesterday can no longer be found today.
That's what backups are for.
Restore that backup to your machine,
and it'll be as if your experiment never happened.
It'll be as if you never broke anything,
because yet didn't you restored to before that experiment.
Now, again, that even sounds daunting.
I get that backing up and restoring from a back up seems kind of daunting.
You have to understand that it is a safety net.
It's a really good safety net.
If you have only one safety net,
that's the safety net I recommend, because it protects you not just from your
experiments, but from so many other things.
But your experiments rarely need that level of protection.
Please try things out.
Learn by experimenting.
Most of the time, things will work just fine.
Most of the time,
you'll be able to recover, be it by undoing whatever it is you did,
or finding a file in the recycle bin or any number of other things.
But the bottom line is that your computer is not something to be feared.
Your computer is... Consider it a toy.
Consider it a tool.
Consider it something that you want
to understand better how it works and by far the best way to do that is
to experiment is to play around is to give things a try,
set up a backup so there's nothing to be afraid of even in the worst case,
which is very unlikely to happen to you anyway and then realize that most
of the time things just work and they're easily undone.
I hope that encourages you to be a little
bit less timid when it comes to your computer.
I hope that helps you understand that the best way to learn is by doing
and the best way to learn what to do is to experiment.
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visit askleo.com/19942. I'm Leo Notenboom and this is askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.