How to Describe a Technical Problem

You are facing a technical problem and want to resolve it. That’s why you went on r/Techsupport in the first place.

If the AutoModerator redirected you here, that would mean your post may lack sufficient information techs need to know.

Follow the four steps shown here for a successful r/Techsupport post:

Step 1: Think About Your Problem

You may know what your problem is, but you need to think about it carefully. These questions will help you:

When does the problem occur? Does it only occur when you do certain things? Where does the problem occur? Is it a hardware or software problem? Does it occur only in one program? For how long has it been that way? Did it start after installing software or hardware? What has changed? What have I already tried? Has it affected the problem positively or negatively, or not at all? What haven’t I tried? There is no such thing as “I’ve tried everything”. These questions might even help you solve your issue yourself. If not, include any relevant ones in your post.

Step 2: Gather Information

Gather general information about your system or device. These are extremely important for a tech to know. Not all details are relevant to your problem, but adding as much information to your post as you can doesn’t hurt:

Operating System (Windows 10, Android, MacOS, which version is it?) Device (Smartphone, Computer, Laptop, which model is it?) Application (one application? multiple? Which version do you have?) Specs (System specs like RAM, CPU, GPU, etc, include even if you include the device model) Please refer to our System Dossier article for details.

Step 3: Choose a title

Your title should be descriptive. Here are some examples of really bad titles: “I have a problem”, “help”, “I’ve been trying for hours and this problem is still here oh no I’m running out of characte”

Examples of good titles are: “Windows 10 shows ‘unable to boot from harddrive’ “, “Android has red icon on top left corner”, “Outlook doesn’t sync anymore”.

The title should be a tiny summary of your post. Just enough that a tech will know what it is roughly about.

Step 4: Conclusions

Read through this Wiki.

After reading these articles, go ahead and start writing your post. It should include your problem (with all the information from Step 1), your specs from Step 2, and what you have tried so far.

Understand that the techs are here because they like to help. And if you piss them off, they’re gone. None of the techs gets paid by anyone and they have no obligation to you. Please be nice to them and always answer all questions. These steps will make it easier for a tech to help you (and they are more willing to). Describe your problem precisely and you’ll get a good answer.

And if your post doesn’t get the attention you’d like it to have, do not repost immediately. Wait a day or so for that.