Most of you coming to this site are here in hopes of obtaining an answer to a problem with your system. Sometimes the answer may already be on your system. For Windows users, it’s just a matter of accessing the ‘Help and Support’ on your ‘start’ menu. The new and improved Vista help menu offers a new feature, which shows up in some responses to your questions, called ‘Guided Help’. ‘Guided Help’ can be easily identified by the blue compass and presents two visual methods that may help you with your situation
Vista Help & Support

Just click on the straightforward options and watch it work. It works either automatically while you sit back and watch or works like one of those late night infomercials hawking educational software where the tutoring CD walks you step-by-step and waits for you to complete the step. A Youtube video posted by czh88 provides a visual example of the feature at work.

A second self help option that often gets overlooked is Microsoft’s own ‘Windows Help and How-to’. I know a lot of you like dealing with Microsoft as much as you like speaking to that annoyingly successful relative at a holiday function but to be all honest sometimes it’s worth listening to.  Here’s a link to the ‘Windows Help and How-to’ site

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-US/default.mspx

It’s a lot easier to try to find answers using the suggestions above and then, if it fails, to start searching on sites such as ours for answers. The worst feeling is asking a legitimate question on an online forum and than being given a response from some know-it-all that has nothing better than to belittle you for asking an ‘easy’ question and offering no help whatsoever.