University of New BrunswickGeodesy and Geomatics Engineering

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Computing-Related Information for GGE Students, Faculty, and Staff

Additions, comments, etc. should be sent to Terry Arsenault

General Information

For Students

For Faculty & Staff

General Information

So Terry, you provide "Level 1 Computing Support". What's that?

If you can't solve a problem, you have three levels of support at your disposal:

The printer's operator panel says "Toner Low".

When this message first appears, it's a warning to the operator (me) that there should be a new cartridge available. I always have one on hand. There's still a significant number of pages left on the cartridge.

When the print quality becomes unacceptable, let me know and I'll put in a new cartridge. At over $400 each, I try to squeeze as many pages as I can from a cartridge.

For Students

Information for students from ITS.

Where can I store my computer files?

You should store your files on your networked H drive, not the computer's local C drive. Details.

Who can use E-51?

E-51 provides GGE undergraduates, as well as anyone taking one of the department's service courses, with computing facilities for course work.

GGE graduate students may use the lab, with the understanding that the above users have priority. If all workstations are being used, a GGE undergraduate may ask a GGE graduate student to give up the workstation.

Printing in E-51

By default, printing in E-51 goes to the E-51 printer.

Double-sided printing is the default. If you want single-sided, you need to specifiy it in your application's print dialog.

Single-sided printing costs $.05/page. For double-sided, it's $.075/sheet ($.05+$.025).

How do I print from somewhere else or to another printer?

If you want to print to a printer not defined on the PC you're using, go here and select the desired printer. It will be installed on the PC.

I sent something to the E-51 printer, but it didn't come out.

  1. Turn off the printer - the switch is on the right side, towards the back. Wait a few seconds. Turn the printer back on.

  2. If that doesn't fix it, log out and log back in.

  3. If that doesn't fix it, reboot.

  4. If that doesn't fix it, come and see me.

  5. If I'm not around, go to the ITS Helpdesk.

The E-51 printer's operator panel says "Tray n Low/Empty".

I usually glance at the printer's operator panel whenever I enter or exit E-51, and fill the trays as needed.

The E-51 printer has 2 500-sheet trays. When you see "Tray 1 Low/Empty", tray 2 probably still has a good supply.

If the printer needs paper and I'm not around, ask one of the folks in E-54 to go into my office and get some.

For Faculty & Staff

Information for faculty and staff from ITS.

How much does a new network drop cost?

A total of $400:

Getting a new computer?

Before you set it up in your office, it should come to me so I can set it up with insurance, IP (e-mail & WWW), virus protection, backup, printing, Office, etc.

Backups

The backup software is scripted to run every night, Monday - Friday.

Although the scripts run automatically, there's nothing automatic about their contents. I need to be told if a computer should be removed from the script, or if you've acquired a new one that should be added.

Once upon a time, I could restore stuff going back as far as a year. As people replace their 6 GB computers with 75 GB ones, that figure is now down to a few months. Suffice it to say you should let me know ASAP when you need something restored.

If you don't get backed up on occasion, it's probably because the backup reached the end of the tape; you should get backed up on the next run.

To minimize problems, please prepare your computer for the nightly backup by rebooting it and, where applicable, turning off the monitor.

If you follow these instructions and the Retrospect client still reports "n execution errors", don't worry about it; the "n" files are system files that don't need to be backed up anyway.

What can happen if you don't backup your computer.

A sad tale, as told by Dave Carney, former GGE Executive in Residence:
My home computer crashed on me and I took it to a local firm. The technician found out that the computer had been attacked by a virus and said he could not re-boot without formatting the hard drive. I said please don't do that because I had a lot of valuable information on that disk. The following day the company called me back to say that my computer was ready. When I asked what they had done to solve the problem they said the technician had formatted the hard drive and restored my Windows 95 operating system, everything else was lost. I spoke to the technician, the manager and the owner of the company and they consistently stuck to the story that this was just a communication problem and that they would accept no responsibility and no liability.

Being a home computer, I was not connected to a network to back up my files and was using MacAfee Back Up to keep my data backed up, but still on my own hard drive. I do not have a Zip drive or CD burner.

I then contacted Recovery Force Inc. on Smythe Street, across from the Burger King. They said they could recover everything and to bring it on up. I was skeptical but after many hours of work, they did. At first they thought that the other company had switched the hard drive because they came up with Windows NT operating system software and a lot of pictures of houses and real estate agents photos, none of which was mine. Eventually they found my name in a file and deduced that the hard drive was indeed mine.

It would seem that when I purchased my computer in Ottawa, what I was told was a new system was really not. In any case after many hours, Recovery Force got back all of my data. Of most interest to me was my genealogical data base containing data that would cost me thousands of dollars to recover since some of it exists only in certain church records in Europe, nowhere else. I also have an extensive collection of family photos that I have retouched after hours of work and would not want to have to do again. So I got back 200% of everything, mine plus the real estate stuff. The price I paid for this, aside from the good lesson on backing up onto an outside source such as CD or Zip, was very reasonable. At first the price asked for was a whopping $3,500, the value of the time and effort to recover this data from a very badly infected and overwritten disk. I know for a fact that the owner of Recovery Force worked one evening to midnight on my computer. In any case, when I said it was too much and I would just have to accept my lost, we negotiated a new price of $850, which I paid and was happy to at that.

So that is it. All to say that if you lose data in the next year or so, you have an excellent firm locally (I believe the only one in the maritimes that can do this sort of thing) called Recovery Force that can help you out.

Dave later sent this update from home:
The same thing happened again in Ottawa when I returned here, my computer crashed in the same way it did in Fredericton. This time a good friend, who is an unemployed Nortel electrical engineer, solved the problem for me. He discovered that the original problem diagnosed by the first Fredericton firm was not a virus after all but a hardware problem, which he proceeded to fix. In under an hour he had me up and running again.

I now have a rewriteable CD burner and everything is backed up, in any case. I contacted Recovery Force to tell of this latest development and they said that this news confirms their earlier suspicion that the original problem was not a virus problem, but they didn't want to criticize the first Fredericton firm as they had done enough damage already.

I also found out that the story of Recovery Force will appear on the CBC news sometime this month, so stay tuned. It will include a short segment with me tying away madly in Wendy's office on her Mac, disguised as my home PC!

I can't print to the office printer.

If the main printer is unavailable (out for repairs, toner cartridge being replaced, etc.), use the copier.

Let me know if you're not presently set up to use the copier and I'll take care of it.

Fill-inable forms.

I've created a number of forms that can be filled in on your computer and printed with Acrobat Reader. If you've purchased the full Acrobat, you can save a filled-in form.

Financial Services

Physical Plant

If the form you're looking for isn't here, it's probably here.