Questions You May Have About Maintaining Your Computer

What’s this all about?
With surprising frequency, Information Services, the Help Desk in particular, is confronted with students who have computer problems and they believe we are responsible for providing them free, unlimited computer support.  This policy is intended to establish a clear understanding that the “care and feeding” of a computer and its accessories is the responsibility of its owner.

What does the Help Desk do?
The Help Desk exists to provide support services to faculty and staff as well as students.  With regard to faculty and staff, we have complete responsibility for their computers as well as most of the ones in the classrooms and labs on campus.

With regard to student computers, we’re there to provide guidance and assistance as time permits.  We’ve set up a self-help table where you can connect your computer to our monitor, keyboard, and mouse and we’ll help you learn how to perform basic troubleshooting tasks on your computer.  We want to help you become more self-sufficient by learning basic computer skills.

We also have some information, tips, and software on our web site.  You might want to check there to see if it may be of value to you.

How about more advanced troubleshooting and repairs?
As time permits, we may agree to perform more aggressive troubleshooting and repairs on software based problems.  We will ask you to sign a waiver absolving us of any liability for our actions.

You always have the option of taking the computer to a computer repair center.  We may be able to suggest some, although we don’t have any formal relationships with any of them.