Electronics Repair & Troubleshooting: A Complete Guide

Every broken device is a puzzle. Once you know how to solve it, you stop throwing away electronics that were never truly dead.

Most people see a dead board and reach for their wallet. Engineers see a fault waiting to be found. Troubleshooting is the skill of tracking a problem to its source and bringing equipment back to life, and it's one of the most valuable, money-saving abilities you can build in electronics, whether you're starting a career or just want to fix your own gear.

Who's teaching you

I'm a Lead Hardware Engineer with 7+ years in industry, and I've built and run a professional PCB repair lab from the ground up. In this course I've distilled that on-the-bench experience into a clear, repeatable approach you can follow from day one.

How the course is built (and where the real repairs are)

I want you to know exactly what to expect. The course starts from the foundations and builds to full repairs of real, faulty equipment:

• Sections 1–3 (about 1 hour 45 minutes): the troubleshooting workflow, safety, and the tools. If you're completely new, don't skip these. They're what make the later repairs make sense.

• Section 4 (about 1 hour 40 minutes): how each common component fails and how to test it.

• Section 5 (about 2 hours 35 minutes): nine complete repairs on real broken devices, from opening the case to finding the fault, plus a lecture on how switching power supplies work.

If you already know your way around a multimeter and basic components, you can move quickly through the early sections and head for Sections 4 and 5, where most of the hands-on fault-finding is.

Section 2: troubleshooting basics. Working safely, especially around mains voltage and charged capacitors. The types of failure you'll meet and what causes them. The first steps to take on any dead device, and how to take equipment apart and put it back together without breaking clips, losing screws or causing new faults.

Section 3: the tools. A full walkthrough of the multimeter (resistance, voltage, current, continuity and more), the hand tools a repair bench needs, the ESR meter and component tester, the variable bench power supply, and soldering and desoldering for replacing parts.

Section 4: testing components. Fuses, resistors and potentiometers, capacitors, inductors and transformers, diodes and rectifiers, transistors (BJTs, MOSFETs and JFETs), voltage regulators and relays. For each one, you'll learn how it typically fails, how to test it in or out of circuit, and how to choose a replacement.

Section 5: real repair case studies. Each one starts with a genuinely faulty device and follows the diagnosis step by step:

• A voltage stabiliser that won't work

• A mini inverter

• An Arduino Mega that won't boot, where a current-limited bench supply and isopropyl alcohol help locate a shorted component

• A lead-acid battery charger with no output

• A dual-channel bench power supply whose output keeps drifting

• Two uninterruptible power supplies (UPS)

• How a switching power supply works, followed by a faulty standalone 5 V SMPS

• A dead desktop ATX computer power supply

Power supplies are one of the most common failure points in electronics, so the repairs lean deliberately towards them. Once you understand how an SMPS works and how it breaks, a huge range of dead devices stops being a mystery.

Why a workflow matters

Beginners tend to replace parts until something works. That wastes money, and it often causes new faults. The approach in this course is the one used in a professional repair lab: make it safe, observe the symptoms, check the power, narrow the fault down to a section of the board, then test individual components. You'll see that same sequence applied again and again in the case studies, until it becomes your habit too.

What you'll be able to do at the end

• Follow a systematic troubleshooting workflow instead of guessing

• Work safely on mains-powered equipment and discharge capacitors properly

• Use a multimeter, ESR meter, component tester and bench supply to track down faults

• Test common components and tell a good part from a faulty one

• Understand how switching power supplies work and where they usually fail

• Choose a suitable replacement when a part has failed

• Replace faulty parts and bring equipment back to life

Is this course for you?

It's for you if you're a hobbyist who wants to fix your own devices, an aspiring technician or engineer building practical skills, or someone who's tired of throwing away electronics that could be repaired. No repair experience is needed.

It's probably not for you if you already repair boards professionally and want advanced topics like BGA rework, firmware-level faults or component-level laptop and phone repair. This course builds a strong, practical foundation and applies it to power electronics and everyday devices.

What you'll need

• Curiosity and a willingness to get hands-on

• A basic multimeter is helpful for following along (the course covers what to buy and how to use it)

• A few old or broken devices to practise on are great to have, but optional

Common questions

Do I need an oscilloscope? No. The repairs rely on a multimeter, an ESR meter or component tester, and a bench supply. A portable oscilloscope appears in the lecture on how switching supplies work, to show you the signals, but you can follow the whole course without one.

Why so much focus on power supplies? Because they're one of the most common failure points. A dead device very often has a faulty power supply, so learning to diagnose supplies gives you the biggest return for your time.

Is it safe to work on mains-powered devices? It can be done safely, and safety is covered first for exactly that reason. If you aren't comfortable working near mains voltage, practise on low-voltage devices first.

How you'll learn

About six hours of video recorded on a real repair bench, with English captions corrected by hand, which also improves the automatic translations into other languages. Every section ends with a short quiz. If you're stuck on a repair of your own, post in the Q&A. I read and answer the questions myself.

The best repair techs are problem-solvers, and by the end you'll think like one: methodical, confident, and able to approach an unfamiliar board without feeling lost. When a repair calls for removing and replacing a part, my soldering course is a natural companion to this one.

Join 20,000+ engineers and hobbyists already learning with my courses, and start fixing what others throw away.