General Network Maintenance

Spent a couple of hours working on what Curtis called "general network maintenance." We checked a misbehaving SMARTboard (I figured out what was wrong!), took the server down and brought it back up, rebooted all the switches, found and removed a broken Ethernet port, and checked a computer in a CTE classroom. It wouldn't let students access the share drive, so Curtis showed me how to tell if it was accessing the network at all (blinky lights where the cord plugs in), then how to figure out what tree it was accessing. All that stuff was fine, so Curtis shared with me a time-saving philosophy. He explained how he could potentially spend three hours going through the computer a step at a time until he found the one thing wrong and fixed it--or he could reimage the computer in a matter of minutes. I'd never really thought about how much easier reimaging is, but it makes perfect sense. I also talked to Curtis about all the images he has made, individual ones for each computer model and year of purchase. He said that's part of the reason why the technology donation policy is in place in Gaston County--if each computer model has to have its own image created so it can talk to the network, then it would potentially be a severe rear-pain to accommodate a bazillion different kinds of donated computer models.
After Curtis and Marti left (by which time it was dark), I helped another teacher who couldn't log in. Okay, maybe "helped" is too positive a word. I was able to figure out, based on what Curtis showed me, that the computer was talking to the network (blinky lights), but that it wasn't switching to the right tree. Unfortunately, I have no clue what to do about that. :) I also went back in the server room and confirmed that yep, there were cords hooked into all the switches for this teacher's classroom. He was able to log in to the big computer lab across the hall, so at least whatever it is isn't a school-wide problem.