On Monday, we went to pick up all of the computers, printers, and cables from the lounge in the faculty center and from the theater in Alumnae Hall. Once we brought it all back to the Help Desk, we had to get it all organized, and we had to ghost the computers once again. The reason why we had to ghost them is because these computers are part of some computers that the Help Desk is selling to the faculty. Therefore, the computers had to be ghosted so that they wouldn’t have any information on them and so they are updated and everything before giving them to a faculty member who bought a computer. Then I went with Ryan to Loyola to see what was wrong with one of the chemistry professor’s computer. She told us that it would freeze a lot and sometimes it would not turn on. She also told us that she has mice in her office and that they had already tried to eat the speakers’ cable. Ryan looked at all of the cables for the computer, but they seemed to be complete without any chewing marks on them. He also checked to see if all the cables were well connected in the outside of the computer, as well as inside. After putting the computer back together, he turned it on, and everything seemed to be working fine. He then decided to schedule an error-checking test for the hard drive. He restarted the computer, let the test start and then we left it. By the time we got back to the Help Desk, it was already eleven.
On Wednesday, I woke up and went to the Help Desk. However, neither Faith nor Ryan had anything for me to do or help them with, so they decided to give me the snow day that the school did not give us.
On Friday, Robert and I headed to Loyola to check on the laptops in the biology department. Faculty in the Biology department had told Robert that the laptops sometimes would not connect to the network. We took out all of the laptops, turned them on, and then signed onto the network. All of the computers seemed to connect just fine. Robert decided to check the network adapters in the Device Manager. He wanted to make sure that the internal wireless adapter was not enabled, because if it was, that would be a reason why the wireless card would not work properly. After checking all of the computers, we saw that there was nothing wrong with the computers. We put them all back and by the time we got back to the Help Desk, it was already eleven.
1 comment:
With the Chemistry professor's pc, you could have also checked the task manager (accessible via hitting ctrl/Atl/Del) to see what processes are running to see if there are any strange ones. (How do you know which are strange ones? It's a good idea to print a list of what are the "typical" programs that would be found on a professors pc so you as a help desk tech would know that. What do you do if you find one that looks atypical? You can do a google search on it to find out what it is and whether it is a typical program or a problem program. Solutions for problem programs are usually given on the web.
You could also start the pc up in Safe mode (hold the F8 button down while restarting the pc. In safe mode (wiith network connection), you would check to ensure the anti-virus software had the latest updates and then run a virus check to make sure there were no viruses cause the freezing. If you aren't familiar with safe mode, google it to get some background.
I would have also downloaded a free version of either Adaware or Spybot Search & Destroy (from cnet.com) and then used that software to check for Spyware on that computer. If the program did find spyware, it might take a couple of passes v\before it removed everything. If spyware was an issue, I would educate the professor on how to run it occasionally to find and remove these as they can effect the pc performance.
Wire damage might explain why the pc might not turn on but not turning on and freezing can hint at a possible virus. If you are not familiar with safe mode and these antispy products please try these out for yourself.
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