BleepingComputer.com: GOOGLE!

I noticed that this little tip hasn't been posted, maybe because many think... "hey, everyone knows that".

However, the truth is, not everyone does know...

So this is a short and simple tip for anyone with ANY problem.



USE THE GOOGLE SEARCH TO HELP YOU!!!!

Just goto http://www.google.com

Type in a summary of your problem such as...

Ok I got a blue screen, and it says something about ati2dev.sys

GREAT!

Goto google, type in something along the lines of "blue screen ati2dev.sys" or "BSOD ati2dev.sys"

You will usually find others with the same problems that you have, and most likely solutions.





I decided to do this because there has been MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY times where I resolved a problem for someone on the forum by simply, going to google, and 3 links down, there is a link to a solution.

So there, google away.

Geez, box! You're giving away all my secrets!

Drat!
The cat is out of the bag!

Now us tech support people cant charge our customers the big bucks anymore!
LOL!

Whenever I try google it leads me here or to other forums like it.

Looks like Google is everybody's friend now. I feel jilted.

calmlunatic, on Dec 16 2008, 04:11 PM, said:

yep, but with a little bit of searching, you can 95% of the time, find an answer.

I do agree on this, nice tip but sometimes you need specific help, someone that will know your problem and knows how to solve it directly, if you know what i mean , but hey yes google is a very good search engine and a vital tool that can be used to do many things!

Box In A Bag, on Dec 12 2008, 12:21 PM, said:

http://tinyurl.com/9zeash

ahaha thats awesome!

Well, the most annoying results for me when looking for answers is the dang paid sites like expirts-xchange and similar sites (i typoed on purpose, btw). Isn't what the internet is all about?

yes that site is ridiculous, I do not believe that it has the answers either, it seems that when you have a problem it has the exact problem that someone asked before with plenty of answers. The truth is, not that many people want to pay, so with that being said, I wouldnt think there are many answers on there

After a search, if you add &as_qdr=d at the end of the location field, you get the most recent results.

But we have to keep in mind that Google is only a search engine, the real material is on the websites like BleepingComputer
Google only finds that material out quickly and presents it in a easy to use form.

We(You) should keep posting nice solutions on BC, so we(I) can google it later

To seach anything on BC using google: use

seach_word site:bleepingcomputer.com

where search_word is what you are looking for.

Romeo29, on Apr 7 2009, 07:57 AM, said:

Or, just use Bleeping Computer's own custom search bar plugin: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ind...t&p=1180382

And here's one that searches Bleeping Computer's startup database: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/searchtools.html

To be fair, the original tip is actually a valid one. I don’t know about novice users, but I rarely use natural language for my Google queries. I usually just enter a list of relevant keywords in an attempt to narrow down the results to exactly what I want. While this does usually, work for a lot of stuff, for things like getting help with problems it often does not.

Using natural language is best for these queries since you are more likely to find pages in which people used that same language to ask for help and got simple answers instead of technical pages that may not help. (When was the last time that you saw a novice user ask for help by asking something like explorer +delay delete file locked +"in use" -force -"unlock handle"? )

I reminds me of when HotBot first announced natural-language query support. It was pretty cool compared to the keyword search that we were used to at the time, but I don’t think I used it much, even then.