This week was another short week due to the snow on Wednesday. Fortunately it was pretty quiet and there were no problems with any computers. I worked 4 hours on Monday and mostly just caught up on some lingering problems we have been having with computers. Some of the old desktops from the computer lab were put in a few of the classrooms for the students to work on. Unfortunately, the motherboards have been going on them so I had to pull two of them out of classrooms.
Another problem we have been having is the computers in the main lab have been having issues on boot. In a months time 3 of the desktops wouldn't boot; only the system fan and a few other devices power on and there is no response from the video card. The first time it happened I figured something just went askew in the BIOS so I reset the CMOS and sure enough it fired right up. Then it happened two more times on two different computers and I thought we might have a problem. Software-wise we haven't installed anything new on them and the computers weren't infected or showing any other signs of problems so I assumed it must be a hardware problem. Nothing seemed to be wrong with them, so I spent time Monday researching online what could cause that. I didn't really find anything I didn't already think of so I am still searching for that problem. I ran the problem past some people and they didn't have any idea either so this one is starting to bug me.
Before I left a couple problems did pop up. The cafeteria cook's printer wasn't working. I did a quick check and found out there was a page jammed in it. That thing was a maze, I have never seen a desktop printer as complicated on the inside as a copy machine until that one. She put way too much paper in the feeder so I pulled half the stack out so it wouldn't do it again.
Mrs. A's laptop, the one I set up last week, needed a few files from her old one. They were from a piece of software she installed to make tests. It saves the files within the program's files, so it wasn't backing up to the network. I copied the old files to the new computer and backed all of them up on her network drive.
I'm still waiting on word about the Principal's laptop and the database is still coming along. The TechKnows, the girls Mrs. Dow picked to help the Teacher's with their computers, were gonna get some information from the computers for the database this week. I'll enter that in Monday.
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Hi Cole,
ReplyDeleteIt looks like you have gotten off to a good start with your new Blog. You are using good troublshooting skills in support of their environment; looking for possible hardware sources first and then proceeding to software possibilities next.
Are you creating an Access database for the Computer inventory, or are you using another dbms? Once you are happy with the database, the queries, and the reports, please consider putting together some brief documentation on how you designed the dbms, and why that design, and then some step-by-step documentation on how you expect it to be used and maintained. Often times when there is a volunteer creating such a resource, it can be a problem if, after they move on, no one knows anything about the application except how to run queries or reports. A good application can then quickly fall into dis-use because there is no continuity after the creator leaves. Documenting the the process of use for the database, e.g. will it be updated everytime a change is made, or will the database be updated during the summer when classes are not running will leave both the database and the documentation as your legacy. You should also discuss a backup plan with Mrs Dow - does it run on the C drive of a computer in her area, or is the dbms on their network, plan for a suitable, periodic backup to avoid loss of the aplpication. Periodic backup of the dbms will ensure it won't get lost or if it gets corrupted they can always go back to a prior backed up version, if there is one.
With the principal's laptop, I wonder if they should consider giving her an external, large capacity drive (they are so cheap and small these days) so a periodic local, back up could be made of the sensitive data she has on her laptop. This way there would be a backup copy of the data and it would be offline from the main network. If she uses her multimedia content primarily in her office, then she could consider storing most or all on those files on the external drive keeping the C drive available for processing and other data. Regards, Mrs M
Hi Mrs. Martin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your input,
I was leaving the database as an Access document for editing and managing. The database will be edited continually. We generally don't leave anything local on the computers; everything gets backed up and stored on the network. Mrs. Dow will be the primary manager of the database and she is well versed in Access so future edits and add-ons won't be a problem for her.
The principal does actually have an external hard drive but she doesn't really have anything I can move onto it. Her biggest problem is that she has a large amount of applications installed and can't part with them. I'm not comfortable enough moving them to an external hard drive since the change of it's drive letter or simply being disconnected could cause serious issues. The second is her e-mail. She had over 12,000 emails saved, though she has cleaned a lot of them out. They all get a copy stored locally for obvious network related reasons. She does have a decent sized music collection, but that is managed via itunes. In the past I have never seen a solid way of utilizing an external hard drive with itunes. Even moving all of the library's files to the drive it still has a tendency to recheck all of the music each time it opens. External hard drives can be nice for storing files, but for active things within the system they can be a headache.