PC ProSchools – TechTalk

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

By David Adkins, former PC ProSchools Student and Help Desk Professional

I received a call today from a student. He was running into a problem installing Windows XP Professional on a Virtual Machine. When the Install reached the ELUA It required the user to hit F8 to accept. The Student proceeded to hit the F8 key on the laptop he was working on only to be met with disappointment that the Virtual did not accept the keystroke. Perplexed the student once again hit the F8 key. Again he was met with the same result. He was not about to let a simple thing like hitting a simple key keep him from installing the Operating System. Just to make sure he hit the F8 one last time. Nothing! The other option was to hit the escape key to return to the last screen. He hit the key and the virtual machine responded by returning to the previous screen as it was meant to. “What the Heck?” he asked himself. Why would it be that the program would recognize all my keystrokes up to that point? He wondered. Well at risk of feeling disappointed again he returned to the ELUA screen and hit the F8 key one more time. Again nothing! Well I’ll call Helpdesk at PC ProSchools for assistance.

I received the message about his problem and called him back. After he went through his frustrating experience with this process, I began to wonder my self. “Was the machine in the active window? He promptly responded to my question with “yes I made sure it was active.” This was defiantly a new problem to me, so I went to my favorite IT Tool, Google. There I found others with the same problem. Their solution was to hit the Function Key along with the F8. Once I instructed the student to try this he was very excited to report that he could now continue with the installation.

One thing I have learned from this job is that Google is hands down the best place to start with research problems.

Microsoft Excel is a popular application used by many companies for tracking and storing data. As a Help Desk Professional, you may be called to fix problems with Excel. Here is a list of problems and their solutions that you may find useful:

1. Remove Passwords on Excel Password Protected Sheets and Workbooks
   You may need to open an Excel spreadsheet that has a password. Passwords can be lost and forgotten. When that happens, you can follow the steps described in Remove Passwords on Excel Password Protected Sheets and Workbooks to help you open a password protected spreadsheet.
2. Solving Common Excel Setup Problems
   When you are having trouble getting Excel to open or working correctly, you have to fix a setup problem. Solving Common Excel Setup Problems describes a few setup problems and their solutions.
3. Removing Add-ins
   Microsoft Excel allows you to install Third Party Apps that extend the functionality of Excel. ASAP Utilities helps you to automate frequently used tasks in excel. You may be having a problem with an Add-In. Microsoft Excel doesn’t have an obvious way of deleting the Add-In. Excel.Tips.Net explains how to remove the Add-In.
4. Excel Formula Errors and How to Deal With Them
   When you create formulas in Excel, you can cause errors to occur. In order to fix an error, you need to know what it means. Learn what #NULL!, #DIV/0 and other error message mean and how to solve them.
5. Repairing corrupted files in Excel
   Files can become corrupt and require repairing. Microsoft Excel has an automatic recovery which attempts to repair that file. Sometimes, you may need to manually repair the file in order to get your data. Try to manually repair an Excel spreadsheet by following Microsoft’s tips.
6. Top ten ways to clean your data
   Sometimes a spreadsheet can have empty rows, misspelled words or extra spaces. You need to clean up the spreadsheet in order to get it to work correctly. Try this tips from Microsoft on cleaning your data.
7. Troubleshoot Errors When Saving Excel Files
   When you save an Excel spreadsheet, an error may occur and you can’t save the file. Microsoft provides common save errors and their solutions.

Bonus Tip

Cheat sheets or quick reference cards lists shortcuts and functions. Use a cheat sheet as a reference so that you work in Excel faster.

Browser Toolbars are add-ons or plug-ins that extend the functionality of your browser. Two of the most popular toolbars are The Google Toolbar and The Yahoo! Toolbar. These toolbars provide shortcuts to your bookmarks, searching and more. While providing helpful functionality, toolbars can cause problems with websites or slow your browser down.

Toolbars alter the functioning of your browser. This can prevent a web application, an application that runs inside your browser, from working properly. You may experience problems with printing a page or saving information that you entered into a form. At PC ProSchools when students have Browser Toolbars installed, we have issues with our web applications. For example, Mediasite (our video gallery application) fails to record when students watch our videos. This can affect a student’s grade because our instructors can’t verify that a student watched it and give them credit for it.

What can you do? You can disable the toolbars through your browser. If the problem continues or you can’t disable the toolbar, you have to uninstall the toolbar from your computer. What if you want or need to keep the toolbar? Your only solution is to install an additional browser like Google Chrome without any add-ons and use it for all web applications.