ERGONOMICS & END USER SUPPORT

Please create a 10 slide PowerPoint presentation from a Helpdesk Training perspective. This presentation will be a teaching presentation based on chapter 4 Common Support Problems. You will be presenting to entry level Helpdesk technicians. You will explain the most common problems and solutions that a helpdesk technician will encounter.

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See how many of these problems you can solve working by yourself. Use books, manuals, online help, the Internet, and other resources, as necessary. Some of these problems are easier than others, so don’t work too long on a problem that seems difficult; ask your work col- leagues or your instructor for help. As you work on these tasks, make some brief notes that describe your experience. Do some metacogni- tion about your problem-solving approach.

1. A user running Internet Explorer reports a message, “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.” What information about this problem can you provide the user?

2. A user gets an error message: “Error Loading Kernel. You must reinstall Windows.” What is the likely cause of this message? Do you really have to reinstall Windows to fix the problem?

3. A Microsoft Excel user often selects the Shrink-to-Fit feature in Microsoft Word to force a memo that is a little too long to fit on a single page. He wants to know if a similar feature is available in Excel to force a worksheet to fit on a single page without overlapping to a second page. Is there a Shrink-to-Fit feature in Excel? If so, how is it used?

4. If you have a desktop computer, unplug the keyboard from your computer while it is turned off. Then power up your sys- tem. During the power on self test (POST) boot up diagnostic tests, one of the devices tested is the keyboard. What message appears to alert the user to the keyboard problem? If you plug the keyboard back in, will the system recover without reboot- ing? If necessary, plug your keyboard back in and reboot.

5. Use the operating system utilities on your computer to document the following information about your computer. For each question, indicate what tool you used to find the information.

a. What model of processor is in your system? b. What type of bus architecture is used? c. How much total memory does your system have? d. Is the subdirectory C:\NET in the search path? e. How is the environment variable TEMP defined?. F. For the mouse on your system, what is the IRQ address and the device driver version?

g. What is the size of the hard drive? How much free space is available on it?

6. Find a utility program in Windows that will scan your hard drive for errors (such as ScanDisk). (Hint: Use Windows help and search for “disk errors.”) Run the error scan utility on your computer’s hard drive. What problems, if any, did the error scan find? If problems exist, what is the procedure you would follow to eliminate them? What precautions should a user take before taking action to eliminate lost disk clusters?

7. A user received a floppy disk from a friend in another organi- zation, but can’t read it on her system. The user says she has never had a problem reading a floppy disk before and doesn’t understand why she can’t read the disk now. Make a list of the questions you would ask the user to help determine the solu- tion to this problem.

8. A user reports that she has a program named ERU.exe on her hard disk. She doesn’t know its purpose, doesn’t want to try running it for fear it will damage her system, and doesn’t want to erase it for fear it is necessary for Windows to operate cor- rectly. What can you tell her about the function of ERU.exe and who should run it?

9. A user in engineering says he has a very old program on a floppy disk that he used to run 25 years ago to perform a spe- cial analysis on steel structures. He now has a client for which he needs to run the program. The program ran previously

on an operating system named CP/M. The program could be rewritten to run on a modern system, but the rewrite would take several weeks. Is there any way to run a CP/M program on today’s computers?

10. A user reports that when he runs a program on his hard drive, he gets an error message about a missing VBRUN600.dll file. He has searched the hard drive and cannot find the missing file. How can he get a copy of the missing VBRUN600.dll? He mentions that his computer does have a file named VBRUN500.dll. Can he use it instead? If so, how?

11. A user who has recently changed departments from manu- facturing to product design says that all the e-mail messages he sends have two lines appended automatically to the end of each message:

GRIGORY VLADNIK MANUFACTURING DEPT, XT 555

He wants to change the department name to PRODUCT DESIGN, but does not know how the automatic lines get there because he doesn’t type them. How can he make the change in his e-mail program? (Use Microsoft Outlook

or another e-mail program with which you are familiar to answer this question.)

12. A Microsoft Word user noticed that another user in her department has more than four files listed in the recently used files list in the Files pull-down menu. How can she increase the number of files listed on her computer?

13. A panicked user writes the following e-mail: “I just acciden- tally deleted a Microsoft Project .mpp file from my hard drive, and I really need to get it back. My job may depend on it. Can you help me get the deleted file back?” Describe the strategies you would use to help this user.

14. A Microsoft Excel user has a spreadsheet with a cell that con- tains #REF! What does this cell entry mean? Research and prepare a list of other messages that Excel can display in a cell that indicates a possible problem with the cell contents.

15. A user discovered a program Win32.exe on his hard drive. He would like to know if it is a program required by the Windows operating system, and what its function is. What advice would you give him?