- if there's an error message, read it. read it twice. sometimes they're not helpful but sometimes they are!
- google the message to see if anyone has had the same issue and found a solution
- ask someone! describe your issue and what you have tried so far. they may ask you to try things that are obvious but people often miss the obvious, or think they tried it and actually forgot to. be patient, they're trying to help
- and, this is absolutely critical - if you saw an error message, give the person helping you that error message right away. don't paraphrase, just copy paste or screenshot the whole thing. i promise, they want to read it
this message brought to you by: a coworker sharing an elaborate theory of how service accounts work rather than sharing the error message that indicated he just needed to log in again. letting me read the error message would have saved... 45 minutes