| Show computer lab proves problematic for files and is prone to deep freeze Jennifer Morgan Contributing Writer My hope in writing this is that others will be spared the pain and frustration I encountered recently Imagine you have three written assignments due for a midterm at 11 am a.m. You go to the library on campus at 8 am a.m. to finalize the work f you started You save revisions as go saye your y you go along You finish and still have time before class to start working on some other assignments Youre You're set for the midterm right That's what I thought too That's when I encountered two problems in the computer lab First the information I needed was online in a file in format pdt I clicked and immediately a dialogue box appeared trying to Ii 1 t J Journal Viewer I had encountered thi this this box boxa a few weeks earlier I could not cancel the action and we students are not given the option of using the Task Manager I was told the only way to clear it out was to restart the computer I had thought this was a small problem that would only last a day or two so I Iwas Iwas Iwas was surprised to run into this little box again Still no I asked the IT gal what was actively being done to solve this problem She didn't know but admitted it had been going on all semester I was rather surprised it hadn't been resolved yet since is a commonly commonly commonly com com- used format So I rebooted and encountered problem number two Deep Freeze I had saved my work to the hard drive and when I went to retrieve the files they weren't there I spoke to the gal again and she said there is a program installed called Deep Freeze that doesn't allow alIw students to save anything permanently on computers in the open lab How HoF are we Si students d p s d to know this The thing is is I If f I wouldn't have had to restart the computer if the technical issue hadn't occurred in the first place I talked to Keith Slade the head librarian for Redwood who told me that the computer lab is a separate entity unto itself that just occupies space in the library He got on the phone redirected me to Darrell Wood who is the manager of academic academic academic acad acad- emic computing for Slade was kind enough to let me use his phone When I called Mr Wood he explained that there was no way of retrieving the documents there was nothing he could do I told him I understood the paper was lost but there was something he could do I asked that there be some type of disclaimer perhaps on the computers themselves letting letting letting let let- ting students know of this limita limita- tion Secondly I asked that the problem be fixed as soon as possible Wood wasn't even aware ware of the problem At this point it was a quarter till 11 and there was no way I could rewrite everything in time for class My work was gone and I still couldn't read the To date November the Microsoft Windows Journal Viewer still launches every time you try to open a file in the computer lab |
