Troubleshooting library · Free
Troubleshooting guides
54 faults across 8 systems. Each guide gives the likely causes, what to bring and the steps to find the fault.
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Open in the appCopper & Certification6 guides
- Wiremap fail, crossed or reversed pairs“Tester throws a wiremap error. I've looked at both ends twice and the colors look right to me.”very common
- NEXT failing at the panel end“It's failing crosstalk. Shows up at the near end and the numbers look worst at the top of the sweep.”very common
- Split pair, continuity fine, NEXT gone“My little tester says it's wired perfect but the certifier fails it hard on crosstalk.”common
- Whole job failing, or passing too well“Every run in the building is failing the same way. Or everything's passing with way more margin than it should.”very common
- Comes up at 100 Mb, not 1 Gb“Port's linked and the user's working, but it's only negotiating a hundred meg. Nobody ever certified this run.”very common
- PoE device won't power, or reboots under load“Camera powers up, runs a minute, then reboots. The one next to it won't come up at all. Same panel.”very common
Fiber Optic6 guides
- Link fails the loss budget“It's over on loss. Tester says fail but the run looks fine and I can't see anything wrong with it.”very common
- Dirty endface that won't clean up“I cleaned it twice and it still reads high. Every time I plug it back in I get a different number.”very common
- Duplex link dark: polarity reversed“No link light at either end, but both fibers test good end to end.”very common
- Bend loss: loss climbs at the longer wavelength“It passes at 1310 and fails at 1550. Something's pinched somewhere and I can't find it.”common
- Link errors because there is too much light“Every loss test passes and the link still flaps and errors. Short run, brand new optics, and cleaning the connectors made it worse.”common
- Hard break or cable cut“Whole sheath is down. I've got an OTDR distance but I don't know which coil that lands in, and I'm not cutting into a live cable to find out.”common
PoE & Network6 guides
- PD will not power up on the port“Plugged the camera in and nothing. No light, no boot, dead. The switch acts like there's nothing on the port at all.”very common
- That port was never a PoE port“Moved the camera four ports over and it fired straight up. Same cable, same camera. The one it was on just does nothing at all.”very common
- Device reboots when it draws peak power“Camera's fine all day and drops out every night. Comes back when the sun comes up. Or it reboots the second the PTZ moves.”very common
- Port stays dead after you fixed it“Sorted the short, put a good camera on it, and the port still won't power. It's like the switch is holding a grudge.”common
- Gig device links at 100 Mbps“It's a gig camera on a gig port and it's coming up at a hundred meg. Link light's solid, everything works, it's just slow.”very common
- Link and power good, device never gets on“Green light, camera's powered, and it never shows up on the system. Sitting there on a one-sixty-nine address.”very common
Video Surveillance7 guides
- Camera drops off stream intermittently“Camera's there in the morning and gone by lunch. Tile goes black or grey, then comes back on its own. I can never make it happen when I'm standing there.”very common
- Camera drops or whites out when IR engages“Perfect all day. Soon as it gets dark and the IR clicks on, the camera reboots, or the picture goes solid white and you can't see a thing.”very common
- Camera cycles power in a boot loop“Camera comes up, gives me video for about thirty seconds, then the light goes out and it starts over. Again and again. It's not the camera. I already swapped it.”very common
- Motion recording triggering on nothing“Customer's getting four hundred alerts a night and it's all headlights and bugs. Now they've stopped looking at any of them, which means the system might as well be off.”very common
- Customer can't view the system remotely“Works fine on the monitor in the closet, nothing on their phone once they leave the building. Or it worked at handover and now it doesn't, and they're sure we broke it.”very common
- Water or fog inside the camera“There's water sitting in the bottom of the dome, or it fogs up every morning and clears by noon. Picture's like looking through a shower door.”very common
- Faces black against a bright doorway“Everybody walking in is a silhouette. And certain times of year the sun comes straight down the lens for twenty minutes and the whole picture's gone.”very common
Access Control8 guides
- Reader dead: no light, no beep“Reader's completely dead. No light, no beep, nothing happens when I badge it.”very common
- Valid read, door never unlocks“It beeps and goes green but the door never lets go. Card's fine, door just stays locked.”very common
- Denied at certain times or certain doors“My badge worked yesterday and now it says denied. Works in the morning, stops after five.”very common
- Card works at one door, not another“My badge works at the front door but not the back one. New cards won't read at all, old ones are fine.”very common
- Nuisance door held and forced alarms“Guard's getting door alarms all day long on a door that's sitting there shut.”very common
- Intermittent reads and ghost reads on Wiegand“Sometimes it reads, sometimes it doesn't. Same card, same door, and the guard gets random invalid-card alarms out of nowhere.”common
- Read range short at one reader“Card has to actually touch this reader. Same card reads from a few inches at every other door.”common
- Keypad won't take the PIN“Keypad won't take my code. Half the buttons don't do anything, and it says wrong code when I know the code's right.”common
Audiovisual7 guides
- No picture through HDBaseT extender“Source is powered up, the TV says no signal, and the little black boxes at each end are just blinking at me.”very common
- Sparkles and dropouts over twisted pair“Picture has little white specks crawling all over it and it blinks out completely every few minutes.”very common
- Camera or mic missing in the soft codec“The camera works on my laptop at my desk, but in this room Teams just doesn't see it, or it sees it and the picture freezes.”very common
- HDCP error on one display“Works fine with my laptop, but the second we play the actual content one screen goes black or throws an HDCP message and the others are fine.”very common
- Hum or buzz in the sound system“There's a hum in the speakers that's there even with everything muted, and it gets worse when the house lights come up.”very common
- Projector dark, dim, or shutting down“It runs fine for the first class and then it just shuts itself off, and lately it's dim even when it is working.”very common
- One zone dead, or amplifier in protect“Everything plays except the east wing, and the amp for it has a red light on the front.”very common
Fire Alarm7 guides
- Ground fault trouble on the panel“Panel's showing a ground fault. Nothing tells me where. It just says ground. I need to find which circuit is leaking to earth before I can clear it.”very common
- Open circuit trouble on an initiating circuit“Panel says open on a zone. Nothing's in alarm, nothing looks broken, but the circuit can't see its end of line any more.”very common
- Nuisance alarms from a smoke detector“Same detector keeps going off for nothing. Same time of day, no smoke, no fire, and the customer's about ready to have it disconnected.”very common
- Battery or AC trouble at the panel“Panel's beeping with a battery trouble. Or it's showing AC fail and running on batteries, and I need to know whether it's the power, the charger, or the batteries themselves.”very common
- Panel cannot reach the supervising station“Panel's showing a communicator trouble or a failure to communicate. Everything in the building tests fine but nothing's getting to the monitoring company, and it's been sitting like that for weeks.”very common
- Duct smoke detector trouble or nuisance alarm“Duct detector's in trouble, or it trips every time the air handler starts. Inspector wants to see the unit shut down on alarm and I'm not sure it ever has.”very common
- Trouble or alarm will not clear after the fault is fixed“I fixed the actual problem and the panel still won't go normal. Resets, comes straight back, or it clears and reappears. Nothing in the building is wrong any more.”very common
Wireless & DAS7 guides
- Full signal, no usable throughput“Phone shows full bars standing right under the AP but nothing loads. Speed test crawls or just times out.”very common
- Clients hang onto the far AP“You walk from one end of the building to the other and the phone still clings to the AP you started on. Calls break up until you toggle Wi-Fi off and back on.”very common
- APs fighting each other for airtime“They added APs because it was slow and now it is worse. Everything is on channel 1 and 6 and the whole floor is talking over itself.”very common
- Heat map was green, the room is dead“The design said full coverage. Stand in that corner office and you have got nothing.”common
- Cannot connect: 802.1X, RADIUS, certificates“Nobody can get on the corporate SSID. Phones say cannot connect to network, or it keeps popping the password box back up.”very common
- Some devices work, some do not: WPA3 and frame protection“Same SSID, same spot, same signal. New phones are fine, the scanners and the printer cannot get on. Started after the security settings changed.”very common
- AP will not join, or joins in the wrong country“Half the new APs never showed up on the controller. The ones that did are on channels we do not use and their power is nothing like the others.”common