We’ve been supporting businesses across Norfolk for years now, and while every company is different, the IT problems they run into are surprisingly similar. The same handful of issues account for the vast majority of helpdesk calls we get.
Some of these you can sort yourself. Others need professional attention. We’ve tried to be honest about which is which.
Slow computers
This is the number one complaint we hear. Everything takes ages to load, applications freeze, and people end up staring at a spinning cursor for half the morning.
There are a few common culprits. The machine might be low on RAM, especially if it’s running Windows 11 on 4GB or 8GB. The hard drive could be nearly full, which tanks performance once you’re past about 90% capacity. Or there might be software running in the background that nobody asked for, things like updaters, cloud sync tools, or browser extensions piling up over time.
What you can do: Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and check what’s eating your memory and CPU. Close anything you don’t recognise or need. Clear out old files you no longer use, or shift them to cloud storage. If the machine still crawls after that, it might just be underpowered for what you’re asking it to do, and no amount of tidying will fix that.
When to call someone: If the whole office is slow, the problem is likely your network or server rather than individual machines. That’s not a DIY fix.
Wi-Fi dropping out or running slowly
Patchy wireless is incredibly common in offices, especially older buildings with thick walls. People assume the broadband is the problem, but nine times out of ten it’s the internal Wi-Fi setup.
Consumer-grade routers from your ISP aren’t designed to handle 20 or 30 devices in a commercial space. They overheat, they can’t push signal through walls, and they fall over when too many people are connected at once.
What you can do: Check whether the problem is Wi-Fi or broadband. Plug a laptop directly into the router with an ethernet cable and run a speed test. If it’s fast on the cable but slow on wireless, the issue is your Wi-Fi coverage, not your internet connection. Moving the router to a more central location sometimes helps, but honestly, most offices need proper access points installed in the right places.
When to call someone: If you need consistent coverage across a whole building or multiple floors, you need a proper wireless survey and business-grade access points. Stacking consumer routers on top of each other doesn’t work the way people hope it will.
Outlook and email problems
Outlook is one of those applications that works brilliantly until it doesn’t. Emails getting stuck in the outbox, search not finding anything, the whole thing freezing when you open it. We probably get five calls a week about Outlook alone.
A lot of Outlook issues come down to an oversized mailbox. Microsoft recommends keeping your Outlook data file under 10GB, but we regularly see people with 30 or 40GB mailboxes who’ve never archived anything. At that point, Outlook is trying to index tens of thousands of emails and it just bogs down.
What you can do: Archive old emails you don’t need instant access to. Delete anything with large attachments that you’ve already saved elsewhere. If Outlook is behaving strangely, try running it in Safe Mode (hold Ctrl while clicking the Outlook icon) to see if an add-in is causing the trouble. Repairing your Outlook profile through Control Panel also fixes a surprising number of issues.
When to call someone: If emails aren’t sending or receiving at all, the problem might be with your mail server, DNS records, or Microsoft 365 tenant configuration rather than the application itself. That’s not something to poke around in without knowing what you’re doing.
Printer issues
Nobody loves printers. They jam, they go offline for no reason, they decide to print everything in magenta because the cyan ran out three weeks ago. We’ve genuinely had clients buy new printers because they thought the old one was broken, only to find the new one did exactly the same thing because the issue was on the network side.
Most “offline” printer problems are caused by the print spooler service hanging, the printer losing its network connection, or Windows creating a duplicate printer entry that points to the wrong port.
What you can do: Restart the print spooler service. Open Services (type “services.msc” in the Start menu), find Print Spooler, right-click, and restart it. Then try printing again. If the printer shows as offline, remove it and re-add it. For network printers, make sure the printer’s IP address hasn’t changed, which happens a lot if the printer isn’t set to a static IP or doesn’t have a DHCP reservation.
When to call someone: If printing issues keep recurring or affect multiple people, the underlying setup probably needs sorting properly. A static IP assignment and a centrally managed print queue through your server will stop it happening over and over.
Can’t connect to shared drives or network folders
“I can’t get to the S drive” is a classic Monday morning call. Mapped network drives have a habit of disconnecting over weekends, after Windows updates, or when a laptop reconnects to the office Wi-Fi after being used at home.
What you can do: Try typing the path directly into File Explorer. If your shared drive is on a server called SERVER01 and the share is called “Company,” type \SERVER01\Company into the address bar and hit Enter. If that works, you can right-click and remap the drive letter. If it doesn’t, the server itself might be down or your account might have a permissions issue.
When to call someone: If this happens regularly to multiple users, the fix is usually a Group Policy or login script that reconnects drives automatically. If the server can’t be reached at all, something more fundamental is going on.
Forgotten passwords and account lockouts
It sounds simple, but this generates a huge volume of support requests. Someone comes back from holiday, can’t remember their password, tries a few guesses, and locks their account. Now they can’t log into their computer, their email, or anything else tied to that account.
What you can do: If you’re using Microsoft 365 and self-service password reset is enabled, you can sort it yourself through the Microsoft sign-in page. If you’re locked out of a local Active Directory account, you’ll need someone with admin access to unlock it and reset the password.
When to call someone: If you don’t have self-service password reset set up, you should. It saves everyone time and means people aren’t stuck waiting for someone to manually reset their credentials. Any IT provider can configure this for you in about an hour.
Suspicious emails and phishing attempts
Phishing has got noticeably more convincing over the past couple of years. It used to be dodgy spelling and Nigerian princes. Now it’s a perfect replica of a Microsoft sign-in page or an email that looks exactly like it came from your MD asking you to urgently transfer funds.
Staff are the last line of defence here, but they shouldn’t be the only one. A decent email filtering solution will catch the majority of phishing attempts before they ever land in someone’s inbox.
What you can do: Train your team to check the sender’s actual email address, not just the display name. If something asks for login credentials, payment details, or urgent action, verify it through a different channel before doing anything. Don’t click links in unexpected emails. If someone does click something suspicious, have them change their password immediately and report it.
When to call someone: If you don’t have email filtering beyond whatever comes free with your email provider, you’re exposed. Proper filtering, combined with multi-factor authentication on all accounts, makes a massive difference.
Backups that aren’t actually working
This isn’t a problem anyone notices until it’s too late. We’ve lost count of the number of businesses we’ve spoken to who thought they had backups running, only to find the backup failed months ago and nobody was checking.
Backups are boring. Nobody wants to think about them. But they’re the single most important safety net your business has. If ransomware encrypts your files, if a server fails, if someone accidentally deletes an entire folder, your backup is the only thing standing between you and a very bad week.
What you can do: Whoever manages your backups should be checking them regularly. Not just that the job ran, but that the data can actually be restored. A backup that completes but can’t be recovered from is worthless. If you’re using a basic USB drive or a free cloud sync tool as your “backup,” that’s worth revisiting, because neither of those protects you properly against ransomware or hardware failure.
When to call someone: If you’re not 100% confident that your backups are running, tested, and recoverable, get a professional to review them. This is not an area where “probably fine” is good enough.
When DIY stops being enough
