Windows 7 Project Update

Went in today and worked on the systems for a little bit, unfortunately the power went out this morning and I wasn't able to keep working, I waited for about 45 minutes before having to leave to go take care of other things. Got some updates done to the systems before the power outage and scanned the systems with antivirus software. Should have a complete list of software to test on the systems by Monday so we'll have a better understanding of the scope of the project. Currently we are looking up some of the Windows 7 Deployment guides to lay a foundation for our testing plan.

Windows 7 Project Update

We've started our project of checking out the school's software on Windows 7 platforms. We've set up 4 computers, 2 running 32-bit and 2 running 64-bit software. So far we've installed XP mode,Office 2007, Open Office, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome 4.0. I spent 2 hours yesterday running through SIUE's website forms for their students to make sure everything worked okay in IE 8 since we had been told that there had been previous problems. So far I've been able to find no problems running the forms, filling them out and sending them so I believe they have been resolved. The forms only work in Internet Explored because of a plug-in specifically designed for it but the 32bit and 64bit forms worked fine. After that I went through and updated Windows and Microsoft Office 2007 through windows update before leaving.

ITS Internship Week Two

This week I came back to check on how everyone was doing with the repairs on the computers. At this point everyone had checked all the systems and we had found that three systems were ready to go but 5 more needed parts for them and one system was still having some issues, the hard drive was either bad or it needed a fresh install of Windows XP Professional. I first went through the list of all the parts we needed and cleaned it up, setting it with computer serial numbers and categorizing that actually parts needed. Once I had finished that I started in on the final computer, I tried getting it to boot into XP but it would freeze right before the logon screen, I then tried to enter safe mode but it wanted to crash everytime I did this and restart the system. At this point I was sure that it was either the hard drive itself had an error or there was a virus on the sytem, I had a windows xp disc sitting there handy so I decided to see if I could get it to do a fresh install, if it would it would wipe off the virus and work or the hard drive would fail during the install and I would know for sure I needed a new one. As I figured, the drive failed and the xp install froze, I stopped the install and ordered a new hard drive for the system.

ITS Internship Week One

Starting off the first project we have done is to prepare for the the main projects that we will be working on such as Testing of the University Applications on a Windows 7 environment and ghosting machines, to do this we first need test systems to install Windows 7 on that work, so we have been going through and repairing the department's loaner computers to use for our own purposes. My first shift I spend categorizing systems and checking for parts that needed to be ordered. I checked three computers today, the first was missing it's power supply, a 400 watt ATX style that we ordered. The second system had the wrong hard drive in it so we ordered a new 80 GB SATA drive for it. The third and final system I got to wouldn't boot past the POST, at first glance all the hardware seemed situated correctly but it was a Dell system that had status lights on the front so I refered back to their site and found out the RAM was being detected but had an error. I pulled out the sticks to find that someone had stuck a 512MB stick in dimm one of a dual channel set up with a 2 GB stick in Dimm two. I pulled out the 512 stick and placed the 2GB stick in it's place and the system booted right up.