Creating a Troubleshooting Page

A troubleshooting page helps users assess the state of their broken/damaged device. Your troubleshooting page will appear on a wiki page with specific formatting guidelines. The document will list the device's common problems and describe possible causes and solutions, with more probable solutions coming first.

Any number of things may be wrong with a specific device, complicating problem diagnosis. As you can see in the MacBook troubleshooting guide, the MacBook may not turn on, it may have a flashing question mark on startup, or it may have a non-functional trackpad/keyboard. Often, several solutions exist for any particular problem.

It is important that the information in this guide be as accurate as possible. Writing this guide requires substantial research, like scouring forums, product manuals, and enthusiast sites. Your troubleshooting page should comprise the most common problems people encounter with this device and what solutions have worked for people in the past.

The basic layout of each troubleshooting topic should resemble the following generic template:

To create a troubleshooting page:

• Click here to start a new page.
• Select "Wiki" from the list of options.
• Enter "[Your Device Name] Troubleshooting" into the title field. Be sure to use correct spelling, capitalization, and spacing when creating your troubleshooting page. For instance, the second 'b' in Blackberry is not capitalized, while the 's' in PowerShot is.

Below is a snippet of the iPod 5th Gen troubleshooting page source code. This should give you an idea of how it's formatted. You can copy/paste the code into a new troubleshooting page, and then just change text as you see fit.

== iPod won't turn on ==  ''No matter what you do, you can't get your iPod to turn on.''  === Hold switch on ===  Before delving into the guts of your iPod, .... read on.  === Drained/bad battery ===  If your iPod won't turn on, .... We sell batteries for both [product|IF195-018|30 GB] and [product|IF195-028|60/80 GB] Video iPods.  === Bad display ===  It is possible that it appears nothing is happening because the display is bad. If .... it is possible the [product|IF195-000|display] is bad and must be [guide|612|replaced].  === Bad logic board ===  If .... the problem most likely lies in the logic board.

Note: [ raw ] [ /raw ] creates a table of contents.

The rest of the troubleshooting page follows the same format for headings and subheadings. Our Formatting help page can instruct you on the different formatting options we have available. This link is also visible when editing your Troubleshooting wiki page.