Peripherals (mice, keyboards, gamepads, webcams, and printers) can sometimes be a pain—they might either stop working or cause problems with the hardware and the software on your computer. But before you make a (potentially expensive) call to a tech support professional, try troubleshooting your gadget problem yourself. There are certain steps that can be helpful in all scenarios, and that may well get your hardware working properly again. Take a similar approach with anything that connects to Wi-Fi, like a printer. Before you start pulling the peripheral apart, make sure that your wireless network is still up and running. A good way to do this is to connect any other device to your home Wi-Fi, like a tablet or smartphone, and check if you can still get online. Knowing more about the problem won’t necessarily change your approach to trying to fix it—but it might. If a keyboard works on your laptop but not on your desktop computer, for example, then you should start by checking the settings and software on your desktop before addressing anything to do with the keyboard itself. In Windows, head to Bluetooth & devices from Settings, where you’ll find options for configuring the Mouse, the Touchpad, and other devices. We can’t cover all the options in detail here, but we’ll use the ever-problematic printer as an example. Click Printers & scanners and select a device: You can then either click Print test page to check the connection or Run the troubleshooter to go through a series of key checks on the device. Over on macOS you can find a similar set of options by opening the Apple menu, selecting System Preferences, and navigating to the screen that’s relevant for your peripheral. Let’s say you’re having problems with an attached Bluetooth keyboard—Click Keyboard to make sure your computer knows it’s connected and to check the key configuration (including key repeat speeds). You might not always be able to find a fix here, but it’s worth checking. Most of the time, driver installation and updating happens behind the scenes, so you don’t need to worry about it—you just plug in a new webcam, for example, and it works. But sometimes something goes awry, and installing or reinstalling drivers can get everything working properly again. To start, head over to the official website of your peripheral’s manufacturer to find the latest drivers for your device—you’ll most likely find what you’re searching for on a software or support page. To go back to the previous example, if you’ve got a Logitech webcam attached to your computer then you can find the relevant software on the support page. Just download the file, open it, and follow the instructions. To identify what exactly is causing the problem, you’ll need to do some detective work. Try shutting down your computer, and unplugging everything that’s attached to it. Power the computer back on and plug the problematic peripheral back in. If it appears to be fixed, it may be having trouble with another peripheral somewhere along the line. Plug your other devices back in one by one to see if you can spot where the conflict happens. If the issue persists, try downloading the latest drivers for each device and checking with the manufacturers for support. Unfortunately, if the problem persists and the hardware makers have not provided a fix yet, you might be unable to use these two peripherals together. For some peripherals, like a wired mouse, it’s just a question of unplugging it and plugging it in again. For others, such as webcams and printers, you’ll need to properly uninstall them from your system. On Windows, head to Bluetooth & devices then Devices from Settings; on macOS, open System Preferences from the Apple menu, then click on the type of peripheral you want to remove. You might also need to uninstall a related piece of software (or two) as well as the device before you connect it again. From Windows Settings, choose Apps and Apps & features, then click the three dots next to a program and Uninstall to remove it. If you’re on macOS head to Applications in Finder, and drag a program down to the Trash icon on the dock to get rid of it. With that done, restart your computer before reinstalling the peripheral.
