We just recently had some changes done to our server at work. Primarily, our network drive got moved to a much bigger server, and therefore everyone in the office had to be re-mapped to the new server.Except apparently that's not all that it was, because when the IT guy was done with my desktop it looked different. A lot of my preferences/display options had disappeared. How did that happen?
I would consider myself somewhere between computer literate and technology-disabled. Hopefully more toward the literate end of the scale. I mean, I have a blog, right? Surely that counts for something?
So I'd like to think that I'm at least somewhat savvy about computer upgrades and such. That it's not a complete mystery to me when IT appears and and does something on my computer. And yet ....
Here's what bothered me so much about this transition to the new server:
- My boss tried to tell them that it would NOT be a good time for us to have any downtime, and we would much prefer to wait until the end of the fiscal year (June). That was ignored.
- I was slated to be the first person mapped to the new network, because it's imperative that I have access to it. This just turned into me being the guinea pig, so I lost use of my computer AND the network for nearly a whole day while our IT guy found out everything that was wrong with the process while he was trying to get me set up.
- This process wasn't tested before it was inflicted upon me. Or rather, it sort of was ... at one point, our IT person called the campus help desk about an issue and I heard him say, "This didn't work last week when I tested it. I called and left you guys a message, but I never heard back ..." So in other words he'd started testing it, got far enough to know the process didn't work .... and then just did it anyway.
- An Internet Explorer shortcut showed up on my desktop. I NEVER use IE. And I HATE icons on my desktop.
- My quicklaunch toolbar, which (sadly) took me months and careful guidance from Keith to discover, yet only minutes to love, had disappeared.
- My Firefox plug-ins were gone.
- My outlook set-up preferences were gone (reading pane, don't categorize the inbox messages, etc.) As I said, not earth-shattering, but it still takes me a good deal of searching and trial-and-error to remember how to restore things.
- What was, to me, the most annoying thing of all, is that he took my left-handed mouse and switched it to right-handed. Physically he moved it to the right-side of the desk, and he also switched the buttons. I understand that many people are perplexed by the left-hand mouse, so that's fine.
But he LEFT it that way. I just think that's rude, don't you?
Plus, there were all sort of smaller issues that were just seriously annoying to fix:
I'm sure this is one of those perpetual problems. IT/help desks complain about inept users. And the users complain about IT taking too long to respond to complaints or resolve issues. All I know is, the LEAST he could have done is switch my mouse back to being left-handed.
he made my mouse right-handed and LEFT it there, with the buttons switched
4 comments:
Did he, like, reinstall your operating system? That all sounds like the default, fresh-out-of-the-box kind of settings. I thought all that would happen is you click on the "Map new network drive" wizard and navigate to the new server -- why does IT even have to be involved?
Are you on a PC? Did you have any kind of user profiles set up? Maybe you can see if somehow those got switched to "Default" or "Admin" instead of your personal profile with your customized settings.
Or maybe I should just shut up because I have no idea what I'm talking about. Although this does make me want to back up my personal settings and all my special Word templates to my removable hard drive now ... At least you can serve as a warning!
I'm sure all of your suggestions are good ones, but since my head exploded while reading them, I probably won't even try to implement them. I see what you're saying about the user profile ... and maybe one exists somewhere ... but I've gotten everything back close enough to my preferences that I'm just going to leave it.
I also didn't understand why it seemed like my operating system was reinstalled. There must have been some other, larger step involved than just mapping to the network drive that I didn't know about.
It sounds to me like they are pushing through a raft of changes - one of which may be moving from roaming to non-roaming profiles.
Half the problem here (and I'm not pointing the finger here), is users have no idea what goes on beyond their own computer - and therefore have no idea what nightmares Microsoft are inflicting on the hapless IT support people.
I once worked for a company that actively locked everything down - we even wrote our own word processor to stop people using Word to write poetry and stick it all over the office walls...
Sometimes I wonder if the IT people are the ones who got Cs in computer school. When I worked at the bank, no one could figure out why every time I went to print, nothing ever came out of the printer. Turns out, (and I discovered this on my own by using a coworkers terminal, after several visits from the IT guys) that they had me mapped to the wrong LAN. All of my stuff was going to a printer in mortgages 4 floors up from me. That seems so basic, like wouldn't that be the first thing you'd think to check when someone's documents aren't printing? I didn't know which LAN I was supposed to be on, I just noticed that my coworker was on a different one when I used his terminal.
English majors rule!!! lol
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