“No, I just know what I need to check on and where it is.”
That was, more or less, the question I was asked, and my response, on Thursday while I was working on a young lady’s computer. She was a foreign exchange student and was having issues connecting to the network. Mentally, I don’t believe I even paused when the computer woke up from sleep mode. Sure, the keyboard had extra characters, and most of the names of icons and menus were in Japanese, but I knew what I needed to check, where it was located, and other possible issues that could be causing the issue.
I’ll admit that even now, I’m not sure what was wrong with the computer, but there were a number of things I could point to that were probably the cause:
- an issue with McAfee Security Center, which I had already seen during move-in, or
- region specific software that I would not be familiar with using or configuring
The computer itself was able to see the registration network, get an IP, and even begin the registration process, but would only go so far. Since she had agreed to the usage policies, but had been unable to progress further, I manually registered the computer on the network, and after that, it was smooth sailing. That option came to me rather quickly, but I tried to find out what was causing the issue, but alas, I did not find it.
What it comes down to is don’t just do what you need to do to get a job done, but know what it is you are doing. If I had relied upon having to read the menus, buttons, et cetera, to get the job done, I would not have been able to even troubleshoot the issue as I did.
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