Start with taking a CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified course. That covers PC hardware and Microsoft OS. (im certified in both its woth it) Network+ is a entry level computer networking cert that is vendor nuteral. You don't learn MS Networking, Linux/Unix, or Mac OSX networking, its all hardware and the fundamentals.
As far as software engineering goes, you really have three options:
1. Computer networking administration and Engineering.
This will give you a strong networking degree, and background and certifications suck as :
This is all hardware, switches/routers programming, cabeling, etc.
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. (MCSE)
Windows desktops and servers using Active Directory.
Red Hat Certified Engineer.
This is for Red Hat Linux Administration.
For hardware goes:
1. Cisco Certified Network Associate/Professional, and Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert.
(CCNA/CCNP/CCIE)
2.Get an B.S. degree in engerining and microchip/ intergrated circut design and programing.
You could really do ALL of these things and then you could do everything you could want and more,
get a strong programing background to. C/C++, Java/javascript, VB, .NET. HTML. PHP/SQL. Python, etc.