CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

Be Prepared!
Effective communication with your customer enables you to start the
troubleshooting process, getting details about the problem and clues about
things that happened around the same time. To continue troubleshooting,
though, you need to be adept at handling computing devices. That starts with
knowing how to handle computer components safely and how to use the tools
of a tech. You also need a very clear troubleshooting methodology to guide
your efforts. Let’s look at these issues.
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD)
All computing devices use electricity. As long as the electricity runs properly
through the circuits and wires as designed, all is good. There are times when
electricity improperly jumps from one place to another in ways that cause
damage, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). EMP shows up in many ways.
Lightning is a form of EMP. Lightning hitting your electrical equipment
certainly makes a bad day! Nuclear detonations also create a massive EMP
burst (yikes!), but the EMP of most concern to techs is electrostatic
discharge (ESD).
ESD simply means the passage of a static electrical charge from one item
to another. Have you ever rubbed a balloon against your shirt, making the
balloon stick to you? That’s a classic example of static electricity. When that
static charge discharges, you may not notice it happening—although on a
cool, dry day, I’ve been shocked so hard by touching a doorknob that I could
see a big, blue spark! I’ve never heard of a human being getting anything
worse than a rather nasty shock from ESD, but I can’t say the same thing
about computers. ESD will destroy the sensitive parts of any computing
device, so it is essential that you take steps to avoid ESD when working on a
PC or other computing device.
NOTE All computing devices are well protected against ESD on the
outside. Unless you take a screwdriver or pry tool and open up a PC or other