I guess you could say I've always been a troubleshooter. I have an ability to "figure things out". I've always liked taking things apart to see how they work. Back in '00, I was poor. Very poor. I had no income, but I needed a computer. My addiction was strong - I couldn't live without one. I had a desktop, but after an unfortunate incident where I, unthinkingly, mounted my (unshielded) speakers beside and on top of my tower, it wasn't working too well anymore. So, I installed windows 98 on the laptop computer a friend had given me. The laptop had a french version of Win 3.1 on it, and that just wouldn't do. Also, the CD drive didn't work. I ended up copying the install files to my friends PC, using file splitter to break the files into 1.4MB pieces, and installing Windows 98 by floppy. Had to use DOS to splice them back together before I could install. Yeah, it took forever, but it worked. While not exactly troubleshooting, its the same idea. Where there's a will, there's a way.

My "professional" troubleshooting experience involves 5 years of tech support with a major computer company. I work in the imaging and printing division, which is known to be one of the most difficult areas to troubleshoot. If you think the only thing that could go wrong with a printer is a paper jam, think again. :)

Much of what I learned, working for that company, can be applied to Second Life®. Because troubleshooting is troubleshooting, be it legal, medical, technology... it's all the same basic principal. If you dont know what the problem is, before you can figure out what it is, much of the time, you have to figure out what it isn't. Finding the answer to your issue usually involves narrowing down the options. Start with the path of least resistance. If your car has a rattle, do you replace the entire engine? I sure hope not.

Here's an example. A real example; this happened to me last week.

I was getting chat lag, while at my club. Nobody else was getting chat lag. I pressed ctrl-shift-1 to see what was going in - sim FPS was fine, 45. My framerate was dropping. I didn't feel like fighting it, and I had been logged in for hours, so I relogged. Came back up, framerate was back to normal. However, I now had some flashing particles around my head. Red and green. I don't know where they came from.

I hit Ctrl-Alt-T: Show transparencies. However, I was in my club, which has a ton of transparent textures etc. So everything became red. I didn't want to leave there right away, so I turned that off and decided to get more specific. Went to View > Beacons, and set the option to show particle sources. Hit Ctrl-N to turn it on, and voila, there was a transparent ball beside my head, emitting particles. I tried to right click on it to see the object name/owner - it couldn't be selected. Detached all my objects Advanced > Character > Dump all attachments. My attachments came off, but the ball was still there. Other people could see it, as well. Reverted back to default avatar by going Advanced > Character > Character Tests > Test Female. Ack, I'm a newbie! But, a newbie with no floating particle ball beside her head. I put all my clothing/skin/attachment items back on, one by one, and the ball didn't show up again. And, it hasn't shown up since.

This is a fairly simple example of how to "solve your own issue". I could have submitted a support ticket, sent an AR that someone was griefing me with a particle ball, etc. But none of those would have gotten the issue solved right away.

Start off with something easy - often, a relog. Go to a quiet sim. Turn down your graphics settings. There are all different ways of troubleshooting, and the route to follow varies depending on what the issue is. There are so many different tools available in Second Life - play with them, get to know them. Watch Torley's video tutorials to learn more, if "trial and error" isn't your thing.

Have fun!