Technicians Tips
Some useful tips provided by SITSS Technicians:
- It is very important to properly remove USB pen drives after they have been used. They should never just be unplugged from the PC without following this procedure because doing so may corrupt the removable storage manager service’s media pools and will stop the backup from working.
- Acrobat pdf, 49kb/1 pages, 02/12/2005, usbpendrives.pdf
- For Master PCs that are normally left on overnight for backup purposes,
we recommend to restart them at least once a fortnight, maybe even weekly.
It is amazing how a simple restart clears out any problems.
- Make new desktop shortcuts for frequently used documents – SITSS
do not recommend storing documents on the desktop, but you can make
shortcuts to them by right-clicking on them and selecting ‘Send
to’, then ‘Desktop’. You can now open the document
by double-clicking its shortcut, but it is still in the ‘My Documents’ folder
and will be backed up.
- Bypass the recycle bin if you really want to delete the file by holding
down the shift key on the keyboard when selecting ‘delete’ from
the menu or pressing ‘delete’ on the keyboard.
- To easily copy files to Floppy or Zip drive - You can easily copy
files to a removable disk by right-clicking on them, selecting ‘Send
To’, and then selecting the device to copy it to.
- Make all your folders look the same - When browsing ‘My Computer’ you
may have noticed that, if you change a folder’s view (i.e. change
to view detailed listing rather than view icons), the change will only
affect this folder and others will still keep the old view. To make
this change apply to all folders select ‘Folder Options’ from
the ‘Tools’ menu, select the ‘View’ tab in the
window that appears and click the ‘Apply to all folders’ button.
- Sort programs in the start menu or Internet Explorer favourites by
simply right-clicking on any of them in the menu and selecting ‘Sort
by Name’.
- Move backwards and forwards through web pages you’ve already
seen without having to step through them one at a time by right-clicking
on the back and forward buttons in Internet Explorer. This opens a menu
of all the pages you’ve visited this session and you can then
simply select the one you want to view
- Assign key presses to shortcuts -You can launch shortcuts from the
keyboard by right clicking on them, selecting ‘Properties’,
clicking in the box labelled ‘Shortcut key’, then pressing
any key. You will notice that the key assigned always has ‘CTRL+ALT+’ added
to it. Press Control and Alt and the key you’ve selected to launch
the shortcut. i.e. You can assign the keyboard shortcut ‘CTRL+ALT+S
to SIMS launcher and can now run it by pressing these keys even if you
are working on a Word document.
- Lock your computer when not using it to prevent unauthorised use.
Press control+alt+delete and select ‘Lock computer’. You
will need to enter your login password to unlock it. If using Windows
XP, simply press the Windows key on the keyboard and ‘L’ to
do the same.
- Cold weather problems with your computer? We've had a few calls to
the helpdesk about computers just shutting down. After some investigating
we found that the common cause of these faults was that an electric
heater was plugged into the same extension lead as the computer. This
drew too much power and either blew the fuse in the lead, or caused
the power to the PC to flicker which caused the system to crash. As
the cold weather closes in please be aware that modern computer systems
including a laser printer do draw a lot of power and nothing else should
be plugged into the same extension lead.
- Printing out problem with a networked printer? Some network printers
are connected to a computer, and then shared over the network to other
workstations. If your network printer is setup this way, please be aware
that the computer it is connected to, must be switched on before you
can print to it. Note that you do not have to actually log in to the
computer, just make sure it is switched on, and is displaying the network
login screen before you try to print.
- Safe storage of back-up tapes and disks! Backup tapes or disks shouldn’t
be kept near speakers, even those that are built into the monitor as
they can be wiped by magnetic fields. For complete safety, always store
backups away from the main computer, and try to take at least one backup
a week off site.
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