<strong>Your Name: </strong>Patrick Collins

<strong>Today’s Date:</strong> 11/9/2012

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

<strong>Total hours for week: </strong>6.5

<strong>Kind of Work:</strong> CUIP, general tech

<strong>Main Report or Narrative:</strong>

Monday:
<ul>
	<li>Continued checking computers. I found one that had a decent processor but was lacking RAM, so I added some in. It still took forever to start up and would become completely nonresponsive for a few minutes -- the caps lock key wouldn't even light up if you pressed it. Once it got going, however, it seemed fine.</li>
	<li>As I looked for a solution, I found this nifty little tool: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html, which allows you to uninstall USB devices from Window's list o' USB devices that it apparently retains indefinitely after you remove the device. I deleted the ~100 USB devices that were in the system's memory, and the startup issue disappeared. Hooray! I think this tool might come in useful in the future, since most of these computers have probably seen dozens and dozens of owners and dozens and dozens of keyboards and mice over their lifetimes.</li>
</ul>
Wednesday:
<ul>
	<li>I mostly continued fiddling with Monday's computer. It had 1 gb of RAM and a 2.9 gHz processor with a reasonable amount of HD space, so I thought it would be a good test case to determine how fast I can reasonably expect the computers that I check to be. I defragmented, installed some device drivers, and ran the various Windows self-cleaning tools. I did notice a small gain in speed, but it wasn't justified by the amount of time that I spent on this one machine. In future I'll stick to getting computers up, running and free from any crippling issues.</li>
	<li>Went to address a work order from the tech request form, and accidentally ended up working on a computer in the room next door due to a typo. Incidentally, this computer had lots of things wrong with it, so it was time well spent.</li>
	<li>I had to leave early to go to a doctor's appointment so I didn't get the chance to do much.</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;

Friday:
<ul>
	<li>Busy busy busy! I spent lots of time poking around computer guts today, which I enjoyed.</li>
	<li>I understood that we needed two working computers (which we had, between the one I had fixed up M/W and the one that Russ had addressed some issues on). I asked Ms. Cobb where they needed to go, and I got a list of four people who needed tech help.</li>
	<li>One was a computer in room 201 that had, by its teacher's description, "completely died." I replaced it with the M/W computer and took the old one back to my lair to find out what had gone wrong. The motherboard was shot, so I cannibalized it for RAM, an HD and a wireless card.</li>
	<li>Another was a computer in room 212 that wasn't able to connect to the wireless. As I ran the Windows "repair connection" tool, the whole system crashed and rebooted. Once it finished restarting, it was able to connect to the internet. I'm not sure what was going on here -- I had a Windows box in the past that crashed only when its USB wireless internet adapter was plugged in, and only when it was left on for long periods of time. Maybe the issue is similar here. If it acts up again, I'll put the wireless card from the dead machine in it and see if that helps.</li>
	<li>I checked another computer from the IMF room, which was relatively high end and seemed relatively new. It had all sorts of notes about parts being taken out and put back in it. The CMOS battery was low, and I replaced that. I also put the RAM from the dead computer in. It continued to give me a blue screen on startup, which the MS knowledge base told me was due to some bug with XP SP 2 and the particular hardware that this system had. I was able to get the computer to boot up off of the cannibalized hard drive. I wasn't able to actually install this hard drive into the case because it had the green Dell quick release plastic thingy screwed on to the outside and the screws were all too sticky for me to get them off. If there was anywhere to get needlenose pliers before Wednesday, that would be cool.</li>
</ul>