Troubleshooting Tales: We've all been there

 Have you ever seen a problem pop up, and you feel with 100% certainty that you know how to fix it or at least what is wrong?  Your air conditioning isn't working, let's call a technician to service it.  Your network isn't working, so the modem just needs reset.  Your stomach isn't feeling well, so you have a bug.  

Except:  the technician tells you that you just needed to replace the air filter.  Your internet service provider was actually down for your area.  You had just eaten spicy food the night before.  These seem easy to identify in hindsight, but when you are fixated on an issue it can put blinders up that prevent you from seeing the proper solution/problem at hand.

Just the other day I was preparing for a meeting with someone over webcam.  I was so caught up in the content of the meeting that I did not check the webcam prior to see if it worked (mistake #1).  As such, when the meeting started my webcam feed was greyed out.  Well, "That's an easy fix." I thought.  So I opened the settings of the video app, tinkered about in there.  That was a dead end.  Alright, let's check the windows settings.  Nothing to be done there either.  Well, you know what?  I've accidentally toggled the webcam off with the function keys before.  So I check all my physical toggles and function keys:  nothing.  Hmm.  Well, let's just leave the meeting (I warned the person first!) and reconnect after clearing my browser settings.  No dice.

Alright, at this point I have to finish the meeting.  I can't waste this person's time while I tinker at this.  So I go through the meeting as a disembodied voice (here was a clue that I didn't notice: my audio worked).  All the while my brain was fixated on this simple issue that was somehow confounding me.  Afterwards I closed the meeting, and immediately restart my computer.  No dice.  Alright, let's re-install the drivers.  Disappointment again.  Let's go nuclear:  it's a new laptop, let's upgrade the BIOS.  That, surely, would fix this silly little issue.  Spoiler:  it did not.

Put down the hammer, let's just calm down

At this point I am obsessed.  I will not and have never been stumped by a webcam issue.  This was beneath me!  It's time to go to Dr. Google.  "Dr. Google" I ask, "help me fix this thing!"  Off I
go.  Much like a person looking up symptoms of a sore throat and finding WebMD articles stating they may have ebola, I immediately fixate to the most interesting things.  For instance:  There was a red dot in the center of my webcam.  Google is telling me that means the webcam is on, and someone may be spying on me!  So let's find out how to detect that (short answer:  (1) Settings->Privacy->Camera (2) process explorer and other forensic programs to see if an application is running in the background utilizing the application ID of the webcam).  I spent at least an hour on this portion alone, and in the end conceded defeat.  

At this point I actually put my hands on my lap, and closed my eyes to think on this.  Is this a defective computer?  Will I need to utilize my warranty for the company to RMA it?  I look up, and on my other monitor is a google search screen from what I was searching.  In the thumbnail of one of the images at the top was a person pointing at a button next to their webcam.  I looked at my webcam.  Well, there was no button...that would have been too easy.

But there was a notch.  It looked like a notch that might clip into place to lock the laptop closed.  But there was nothing for it to clip into.  I press it.  Nothing, it's not a button.  But it moves.  I slide it over...

And solved the issue.  The laptop had a privacy mode toggleable that slides over the webcam.  That entire time, all of those issues and rabbit roles chased, and I was thwarted by the easiest solution.  That's not to say that this was all a waste of time:  I learned a lot about privacy tools, and malicious application monitoring, as well as a valuable lesson about trouble shooting.  So what's the moral of this story?  The moral is:  sometimes the answer isn't just right in front of you.  You need to sit back and think: what's the most obvious answer?  After that, think: alright but, what's even more obvious than that?  

Stay humble!

Sometimes the solution is staring, mockingly, right at you