<strong>Your Name:</strong> Allan Zhang

<strong>Today’s Date:</strong> 2011/04/01

<strong>Day(s) worked or described:</strong> T F

<strong>Total hours for week: </strong>8.5

<strong>Kind of Work:</strong> Tech general

<strong>Main Report or Narrative: </strong>The brunt of my work over the past week consisted mostly of just general tech issues around the school. I'm still waiting on the complete inventory from last year so I can see what's changed for the mass inventorying that CPS wants done. Anyway, on Tuesday, I worked to set up a printer in room 102, because the previous one that they had been using got stolen somehow. I encountered some form of "kid desktop" software, which was rather frustrating to deal with, since apparently only two out of the multiple teachers in that room actually knew the password (and even then, they had to go retrieve it from their notes). Also mysterious was that the techco passwords didn't work, and the teachers account on the computers was an administrator account. No idea what's up with those two computers, but whatever. I installed the printer on both of them, then reset the techco password.

I also got several reports concerning slow computers in the school, and I couldn't really do too much for them because I know that I had already run all of the tools known to my mind at least (defrag, cleanup, etc), short of a reinstall of Windows. I ended up installing some more RAM on several machines, particularly one in 205 and another in 201. I saw a slight speed boost, but nothing too considerable. I guess that the problem has to come from Windows then or something.

After dealing with those slow computers, I did a quick look through the computer lab. I noticed that another two mice had gone missing, and that some keyboards or mice seemed to have been swapped between computers. I also checked all of the computers, and noticed that two had issues, but I ignored them for now since I wanted to catch Mr. Khelghati to tell him to send out the tech notice about the computer lab before any more equipment got stolen/moved.

I found Mr. Khelghati, and he sent out the tech notice about the computer lab. But for the rest of Tuesday, I worked with Ms. Alverado to get all of the spare parts that I needed to get Reavis up and running, which consisted of: Spare MoBo batteries so those Deep Freeze problems could stop, spare mice both for general usage and to replace those that were presumably lost in the Computer Lab, Toner for the printer in 211, and replacement toner for the Lexmark model in the Office and for the Lexmark C734ns that populate the school.

On Friday, I spent a lot of time in the computer lab, working on those two computers that I found problems with. Inside of one of them, the heatsink had detached from the MoBo, for reasons unknown to me. It's probably fixable just some thermal adhesive, but I just set the computer aside for now, since the school definitely didn't have any. The other computer kept on getting a BSOD after being on for a certain amount of time. That pretty much meant that the HDD was on its last legs, and sure enough, I soon got an error that the primary boot disk couldn't be found. I tried to get chkdsk to run on the machine, but it ended up flaking out every time I tried. I should probably just replace the HDD with one from another broken machine, but I didn't get around to that.

I also ended up installing some of the Elmos that came in (it's like a projector but with a camera) in some classrooms, and showed the teachers how to work them.

There was also this computer that was sitting in storage in the Office, and I moved it with the other computers in storage in room 112, and checked its viability. It was fine, except that it needed some RAM, after which it ran just fine. I'm still having trouble finding a teacher with room for these computers though. I think there's still something like 5-6 unused ones. I might end up putting some in the computer lab to try to offset the shortage there, since we basically just lost another two.