Help Us Help You

Nothing is more time-consuming for IT Help Desk people than trying to troubleshoot poorly-described help requests. Here are a few examples of the most common poorly-worded help requests that the average IT department receives and some simple solutions:

1. “Something’s wrong with my computer.” / “The computer in room ___ is acting funny.”

This is about as non-descript as you can get. Is the computer covered in coffee? Has someone turned the monitor upside down? Is it on fire?

If you don’t know what’s wrong with your PC, at least give your Help Desk the answers to these simple questions:

• What do you see on the screen?
• What were you doing when this started happening?
• What are you trying to do/unable to do now?

2. “I can’t log in.”

These days, there are a lot of different places that an employee of a company has to do at different times:

• Initial log in to the network domain
• Opening up Outlook...usually an invisible log-in, but not always
• Using Outlook Web Access at home or at a remote site for email
• Using a VPN client to connect to the network remotely
• Logging into a particular database or data warehouse
• Many more!

Tell your Help Desk which one you’re talking about! Also, if you forgot your password, just say so. It’s easy to reset it, but they need to do it over the phone or in person. And for security reasons, don't trasmit passwords over email.

3. “There’s no network at home.”

This is a non-specific description of one of many unique possible problems. You will need to do some troubleshooting to narrow down to the source of the problem.

First of all, are you able to surf the internet? Test this by typing in the name of a website at the top of your Internet Explorer window, such as http://www.google.com/ or http://www.yahoo.com/.

If no websites appear, then it’s best to turn the cable modem (or DSL modem) off and on. This resets the connection with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and usually corrects this problem.

Still no websites? Next, turn the router off and on (if there is one).

If you are able to surf the internet and still can't "log-in" to get company email or network resources, then your problem is either:

(a.) Difficulty logging in to Outlook Web Access for email

or

(b.) Difficulty establishing a VPN connection

If the answer is (a.), then you have an issue with your network account that requires you to reset your password. If the answer is (b.), then the VPN settings have probably been misconfigured. When you call your Help Desk, be sure to describe which of these two it is.

4. “I can’t print.”

Do you have any printers installed in your user profile? This should be your first check. Click on Start, then click on Printers and Faxes. (If you don't see "Printers and Faxes", click on Settings, then you should see a link for Printers and Faxes.) A window will pop up with all of your installed printers. If you don't see any here, you'll need to install a printer by clicking on Add a printer under "Printer Tasks" in the left column of the window. For more detail on how to install a printer, please see my 6 November 2005 Tech Tip entitled "I can't print!!!".

Which printer are you trying to print to? A likely problem is that the wrong printer is set as the default. In this "Printers and Faxes" window you now have open, your default printer is marked with a check mark like so:

Did you look in the print queue to see if that printer is printing other jobs ahead of yours? To look in the queue for a particular printer, simply double-click on that printer in this "Printers and Faxes" window and its queue will appear in a new pop-up window. It may be the case that the printer is stuck on a job in front of yours. Try deleting the print job at the top of the list. Then turn the printer off and back on again to clear the memory.

Help us help you. There are a million things that can go wrong on a computer network, so the more information you give us about your problem, the better chance we have of solving your problem in a timely manner.

“I'm out here for you! You don't know what it's like

to be me out here for you. It is an up-at-dawn

pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about!

Okay?! Help me help you…help me help you.”

(from the motion picture Jerry Maguire)