Learning how to troubleshoot and expertly navigate computers?

Experience is the best teacher, but hardcore free-form exploration can get you that experience relatively quickly. Curiosity and memory mean more than research material.

But even that has it’s limits. Many times, expertise is more a matter of knowing where to look for information rather than of having that information in your head. This is especially true of computers where things can easily advance faster than human memory can learn. And one great place to look for information is Scott Mueller’s Upgrading and Repairing PCs, now in (I believe) it’s 22nd edition. I myself have an old copy that still have tons of relevant info despite being a decade behind and not even mentioning the Intel Core i3/5/7 series.

Agreed, dig in and work it out. It’s how all geeks learn. I started with Mueller’s way back in 1995 also.