Narrowing the scope of the troubleshooting

Minimizing the scope of the problem can make troubleshooting more effective. The regularity of the problem and the specific circumstances often imply the cause of the problem.

Here are some of the checklist that can help reduce the range of errors. Browse through these questions before you go wrong, and there might be additional discoveries.

1.	Do you have the latest patches on your phone?
2.	Do you have any known issues with the support.microsoft.com query? There are no hotfix available to solve the problem
3.	Does the problem occur occasionally or can it always be reproduced?
4.	Does the problem only occur on several machines or in all environments?
5.	Is there a simplified program that can reproduce the problem for us to test?
6.	Did you catch the screen-shot when the problem happened?
7.	What are the specific steps to reproduce the problem? What's so special about that?
8.	After the problem occurs, what methods can be temporarily resolved or mitigated?
9.	Have you got any anti-virus software? Is there a firewall?
10.	What is the approximate software architecture? How is the data flowing throughout the software environment?
11.	is the troubleshooting work done in a production environment or in a test environment?
12.	Did you use the database? If so, what database is it?
13.	Does the problem have to do with load?
14.	Developed with what? Is it all managed code? Is there a VB, C + +, or COM +?
15.	What is the network environment? Are you using NAT (Network Address translation)?
16.	Is it a cluster environment? Is there a load balancer used?
17.	Is it a domain environment?
18.	If it is not a domain environment, is there an attempt to test the same account that created the same password in the server and client?
19.	What system patches have been installed recently? Did you try to uninstall the patch and test it?
20.	Is there anything unusual about the system other than the problem itself? such as CPU and memory usage, and the use of the network?
21st.	Is the load of the program within the normal range?
22.	Is there anything unusual in the system log?
23.	Have you tried to change the program's account to test? For example, create another administrator account to log in to test.
24.	Does the program have a UI? Do you double-click Start or start with task management timing?

Note: This form is good, if possible, in the future to summarize some of the additions.

Excerpt from: <windows high-efficiency error > for user-state programs