Or you click on FILE, PRINT to get a copy of that business proposal that you need to send to a prospective client today and your printer just sits there.

In these and any number of like situations you know that computer problems may crop-up at most inappropriate time. What do you do? You may spent time troubleshooting resolution yourself but you have a small business to run and your business is to make it profitable and not to spend your time troubleshooting PC problems.

Your other option is to call a technical support call center for assistance.

Here are some step-by-step rules to follow to make experience easier.

Some of these items may sound basic but they are necessary to review prior to your next call into any technical support call center.

Before You Call:

~ Make some notes. Be ready to outline, step-by-step, just what happened and what you were doing prior to it happening.

~ Try to repeat problem so that you know what error messages, if any, popped up.

~ Read everything you can in manuals, online information and FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) lists, to make sure you aren't just suffering from an all-too-common and quickly solved problem.

~ Perhaps you should use email support option offered by most companies support services. Often, by writing down problem, it helps you get a clear picture of problem in your mind. Then, your receive reply, you have step-by-step resolution in black & white for your records.

~ Make sure you've downloaded all most recent updates and patches. Don't expect technical support rep to spend a lot of time troubleshooting your copy of their software when it may be two or three generations old. Their are trained to troubleshoot most current version of their software.

~ Have your warranty cards, customer number and serial numbers ready. In addition, have a pen and paper available to take notes. You may want to have your manual ready because you might be asked to refer to it.

~ Have a ready outline of troubleshooting steps you've done to solve problem to this point.

~ If you can, call at off-peak times. Generally, mornings are less busy in customer call centers. You may try to determine where a company is from their literature, manuals, or web site. Generally, that is where their customer support call center is located. If they are located in Palo Alto, CA, that's West Coast Time, if their support line opens at 6 a.m. try then. In addition, newer, less experienced support reps are assigned busiest and odd hour shifts when they first start out fielding customer support telephone calls. Thus, if you make effort to call at right time, you'll hold less time to get to a support person and may get a more seasoned support person who may be able to solve your problem in less time.

Computer Hardware Problems:

~ Make sure your computer is plugged in and turned on and that you have power in your office at that wall electrical outlet. Be certain that all your peripherals, keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, external drives, etc., are connected properly. Unplug them and plug them back in again just to insure that all are seeded properly. This may resolve a hardware problem.

~ Try to isolate problem. What exact piece of hardware is not working and under what circumstance?

This may be alarming to any small business who works with a computer, but number of small businesses who base their business on computers must be particularly alarmed.

Rather then being alarmed, a better course may be to become aware. To ask what measures you can take to protect important information that you have stored on your office computers. Then what measures that you can take to shield your small office computer systems and data from harm.

All good computer data security begins with a regularly scheduled data backup plan. Your own businesses' "Backup or lose it Plan". All data critical to running of your business on desktop PCs and notebooks must be backed up regularly. If it is daily, weekly, or monthly, depends on your business, as long as your business data is backed-up regularly.

Make sure you implement and stick with an automated backup system, where you regularly monitor log files and run test restore jobs. Also be sure to invest in a substantial media rotation plan and rotate your backup media off site on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

Virus Detection

To aid you in maintaining your computer, invest in a good utility software package that includes a computer virus detection utility. Both Norton and McAfee are good packages for this purpose.

If you have not installed a virus scanning utility on your computer, especially if you have a live DSL or cable Internet access -- do it A.S.A.P. Your computer system is susceptible to outsiders probing your computer files or transmitting a virus to your computer system. With one of these Internet connections, you must be even more vigilant.

Be sure to go online and update virus scanning utility on a regular bases so that you can protect your system from latest computer virus circulating. New viruses circulate Internet daily and you will not be fully protected unless your virus detection software is as current as possible.

Another basic virus protection tip -- most computer viruses are transmitted via email attachments. Thus, do not open email attachments from email addresses that you do not know.