Q. What sort of computer and computer software should I have?

A. See: the page on Computer specifications for more information.

Q. Why doesn't the computer in my apartment connect to the Internet?

A. There is a long line of programs, hardware, and connections between your computer and the Internet. Starting with the simplest, check to make sure the ethernet cable between your computer and the wall jack is secured. If the connection is firm and you still cannot get to the Internet, check the back of your computer where the ethernet cable plugs in. Most computers have little green and/or yellow LEDs that indicate whether the computer is communicating at all on the Internet. If there no LEDs are on, either the problem is with the ethernet card on your computer or a device called a router on the network. You can tell which by unplugging your computer from the ethernet jack in the wall and connecting a computer you know works on the Internet in its place. If that computer doesn't works, the problem is with network. Call 8333 for DSL network support. If that computer does work, call the Bridges Computer Help Desk at 8135. If the problem is intermittent so that you can get on the Internet at least occasionally, you may also e-mail res.it.help@wingate.edu to report the problem.

Q. My computer once ran very well; now it is soooo slow, why?

A. Finding out why one's computer runs slowly depends on when it is running slowly and when it started behaving so badly. If this happened just after you installed a new program or upgraded one you already had, it may be either that the new program is taking up too much memory, too much disk space, too much virtual memory, hogging the CPU, or just isn't playing nice with the other programs. You can try uninstalling the program you recently installed (and by all means, if this was a free utility from the Internet, get rid of it--see the section on Spyware and Ad-ware). Again try calling 8135 or write to res.it.help@wingate.edu if you need assistance.

Q. No, I haven't installed anything new or if I did, I uninstalled it, but the computer is still running slowly. What else can I do?

A. If your computer is running slowly all the time, and you are not seeing any intrusive pop-up windows, and you didn't recently install something new, the reasons could be that you are running out of disk space, your disk space is fragmented, or you have some sort of virus running around in the background. You can fill a disk up quickly if you download a lot of video or music files to your hard drive. You can check how much free space you have on your computer by going to My Computer and selecting your hard drive, where you will find an area called "details." If you right-click on the drive, you can also select Defragment from the Tools tab. If your computer is still running poorly, you may have a virus.

Q. A virus? I have an antivirus program, how can I have a virus?

A. Antivirus programs do three basic things: sniff for viruses coming into your computer from the network or removable drives (such as floppies), scan for viruses that may be on your hard drive or memory, and update their virus catalogs (called virus definitions). All three have to be done for an antivirus program to be effective. Preventing viruses from coming in (sniffing) is the first line of defense, but new or unfamiliar viruses (those not currently part of the program's list of virus definitions) will get through, so it is necessary to periodically scan the computer for viruses. Of course, neither scanning nor sniffing will do any good if the virus definitions are not updated. Most antivirus programs have schedulers that you can use to automatically scan your computer and update the definitions. A good procedure is to have the computer update its definitions once a day and run a scan once a week. These can be done at times that you don't use the computer (though, of course, it will need to be on!). If you haven't set these up, do so now and also manually update your antivirus program and scan your disks for viruses.

Q. I don't have an antivirus program, or the one I have has a temporary license and won't update the definitions. What do I do?

A. An antivirus program is as only as good as its update. If you like the program you are using, stick with it, but pay the necessary fee to keep getting the updates. If you don't want to use it there is a free alternative, the Free Edition of Grisoft's AVG Antivirus.

Q. O. K., but my computer doesn't run slowly all the time, it is just that the Internet is so slow and I get all these pop-up ads, even when Internet Explorer isn't running. What is going on?

A. Your computer might be running at a snail's pace over the Internet because the Internet itself is slow. Most of the time this isn't the case, however, especially when everyone else seems to purring right along. More likely, your computer has downloaded something called spyware or ad-ware. Spyware are very small programs that monitor what you are doing on the web and then report what you are doing to some business or another. All that extra traffic can slow things down. Ad-ware uses pop-up windows to bring ads from the Internet to your computer's desktop. Ad-ware can even get around the pop-up blockers because it behaves more like a person clicking the Internet Explorer icon over and over again than like pop-up window. This alone can slow your computer down, even when you are not using the Internet. Ad-ware can also monitor your Internet browsing in order to select customized ads. The most frequent source of ad-ware and spyware is free utilities (such as Weatherbug, Gator, and many types of search bars), or just by visiting certain sites. Two tools to remove ad-ware and spyware are Ad-aware and Spybot S&D. If your computer is running so slowly that it cannot download these programs, call the Help Desk at 8135 or e-mail res.it.help@wingate.edu and someone will come with an install disk that you can use.

Q. I've forgotten my Wingate Unversity e-mail password. Is there anyway I can get it?

A. You may request to have your password reset from Password Central. If you cannot log onto a computer, you see Jimm Wetherbee in the Library. Please remember to bring your Student ID.

Q. I've been receiving a lot of spam on my Wingate University e-mail account. What I can do about it?

A.There are a number of things that you can do about spam that can help decrease (though not eliminate) the number of spam messages that you receive. For instance, many spammers masquerade as legitimate online establishments such as EBay and PayPal. You can often forward these spam messages to legitimate businesses noting that someone is using their good name for unlawful ends. For instance, you can report spam pretending to be from EBay by writing to spoof@ebay.com. You can also submit a complaint to SpamCop. SpamCop is one of the services Wingate University uses to filter out spam, so by using it you help enhance your own filter. SpamCop is also useful against spammers who make no pretense representing known legitimate online businesses. Also, you can enhance how the e-mail server filters your mail. For details, see the e-mail guide on filtering. Finally, you can forward spam messages to spam@wingate.edu or (for WebMail users) spam@wingatespam.edu. For more about spam, see the section about spam in the e-mail guide.

Q. Can I use the junk mail filter on my e-mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.) to filter out spam?

A. Most junk mail or spam filters work just fine. The one glaring exception to this is Microsoft Outlook. Outlook's junk mail filter from time to time will start writing to the junk mail folder until it fills up the server's disk drives. This crashes the e-mail server. Turn off Outlook's Junk E-mail Filter. To do so, go to Options under Outlook's Tools menu and go to Preferences > Junk E-mail. Select "No Automatic Filtering." For all other e-mail clients, remember to check the junk mail folder regularly since client filters are not perfect. Also, please forward any junk in those folders to spam@wingate.edu.

Q. I have my wingate.edu mail forwarded to a third-party e-mail provider (such as aol.com or myway.com), but I am not receiving wingate.edu e-mail, why?

A. There are a number of reason why you might not be getting the wingate.edu that you have forwarded to another account. First, check your wingate.edu e-mail account to be sure that the forwarding address is correct. See the e-mail guide, should you have forgotten the detail on forwarding. Another possibility is that you have reached the quota set by your third party. There are two final possibilities that are related. It is possible that you have set your anti-spam filters on the third-party e-mail account too broadly. For instance, in an attempt to filter out some mail from wingate.edu, you have filtered out all mail from wingate.edu. Likewise, another person using this third-party e-mail provider might have [falsely] alerted the postmaster there that he or she was receiving spam from wingate.edu and so all mail from wingate.edu to anyone at the third-party provider is treated as spam (see the next question for more details).

Q. Sometime it takes two or three days for e-mail from my professors to reach me. What is going on?

A. It is very likely that you are forwarding your mail to another e-mail account and the ISP (such as AOL) is throttling-down mail from wingate.edu. Normally e-mail is processed in the order it is received, but there is an anti-spamming technique whereby mail from suspect domains is given a lower priority (throttled-down) and so waits in a queue until e-mail of a higher priority is processed. This often means that suspect mail either waits for days or expires in the queue waiting to be processed. The likely reason that wingate.edu is being throttled is because someone complained about some of the bulk-mail sent out on student-l or one of the other Wingate University mailing lists, not realizing that by so this would affect all wingate.edu e-mail for all subscribers on the ISP. AOL, for instance, is very aggressive about throttling down domains that subscribers have made complaints. Because Wingate University cannot control how various e-mail services choose to throttle mail from wingate.edu, the best suggestion is to remove the forwarding on your wingate.edu address. Moreover, users who forward their e-mail will be removed from the list of Spam Lovers.

Q. Why is it that when I compose a message to my class by way of IRISLink, it sometimes takes hours or even days before it is sent?

A. Technically speaking, IRISLink does send anything, it merely brings up your e-mail composer and inserts the list of recipients into the the To: and CC: fields. For most e-mail programs, the e-mail composer and e-mail messenger (the program that actually sends the message) are the same thing. This is not, however, the case with Outlook. By default, Outlook uses Microsoft Word as its e-mail composer. It may not look like Word, but it is. If IRISLink invokes the e-mail composer before you start Outlook, the e-mail is not sent but placed in your Outbox until you actually start Outlook. The safest suggestion is to have Outlook running in a minimized state while you are not actually using it.

Q. I am trying to send an attachment via Wingate's WebMail. It looks as if it is going through, but when I try to pick up the attachment, I get an error. What is going on?

A. When Webmail sends attachments, it first creates some temporary files. The e-mail server is suppose to delete these temporary files as soon as the message is sent but this does not always happen. These temporary files are deleted on a regular basis, but it is possible that an un-purged file has been created between deletion cycles. If so, please e-mail Jimm Wetherbee or call 8092.

Q. I worked forever composing a message on the Wingate Webmail and when I went to spell-check the message, it just disappeared. Where is it?

A. Because there are only so many Webmail sessions the server can handle and because many people do not log-off from their Webmail sessions, the server times out after thirty minutes of inactivity. The sad truth is that your message disappeared in the Internet ether and cannot be retrieved. So why does composing a message look like inactivity to the server? The server is looking at transactions between it and your browser (primarily sending and opening messages). Composing is done entirely on your machine, so as far as the server is concerned, you aren't doing anything.

Q. So, what do I do when I need to compose a long message?

A. The best thing to do when composing a long message is log off your Webmail session and compose the message in a word processing program. When you are done you can log back onto Wingate Webmail and either copy-and-paste the message in the composition window or send the message as an attachment. Alternatively--if you are wont to compose missives online--you can set up an e-mail client instead.

Q. I just saved my paper to a floppy disc, but the computers in the labs won't read it. Why is that and what can I do?

A. There are many reasons why the lab computers can't read your file. The most benign reason would be that the computers in the lab use Microsoft Office and expect files in Word, Excel, Power Point, or Access format--depending on whether you have a word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, or database file. If you are using something such as Microsoft Works or WordPerfect, you must change the file type before coming to the lab. This can be done in the Save As feature in the File menu. Change the file type to one of the Microsoft Office file types mentioned above. The other set of reasons has to do with floppy disks themselves, which is why it is not a good idea to use floppies at all. Finally, as computer labs are being updated, you will find that the new comptuers do not even have floppy drives. This has already happened in the Library Lab.

Q. Whoa, why shouldn't I use floppy discs, and what other method is there for getting files to the one of the labs?

A. Floppy discs have become increasingly less reliable over the years. In part this is because floppy drives are not as well made and so either destroy floppy discs while "saving" files or are misaligned so that they work just fine until you take the floppy to another computer. Just don't use floppies or if you must, make sure your file is saved on your computer's hard drive! There are a number of alternatives to floppies: USB jump-drives (aka thumb drives), CD-Rs, and CD-RWs, your N:\ drive, FTP (faculty and staff have a special FTP section), and if your file is under 3MB, you can even e-mail it to yourself as an attachment.

Q. Why won't my jump-drive work in the Computer Lab?

A. There are a couple of possibilities here. First, many jump-drives use some sort of authentication scheme, such as a password. However, these scheme require that software be installed on the computer. Computers in the labs will not allow students to install programs. Some of these password-protected drives have areas that are not protected. In these cases, you may save your files in the unprotected area of the jump drive. Another possible reason is specific to the Library Lab. The Library Lab has two sets of USB ports on its computers, on the computers themselves and on the monitors. The ports on the monitors, however, do not work with all jump-drives. However, there seems to be no such problem with the ports on the computers themselves.

Q. I cannot seem to save my work to the CDs I have. Is there something wrong with the CDs or am I doing something wrong?

A. There are basically two types of writable CDs, CD-R (R for Recordable) and CD-RW (RW for ReWritable). In most cases you cannot save directly to a CD-R but must copy a file from another location (say your My Documents folder) to the CD-R. Unless formatted, the same holds true for CD-RWs. There are some CD burning programs that mimic a direct save, but many do not, including the native burning program in Windows XP. For details on how to save to CD, check the help page on the subject.

Q. Okay, I formatted a CD-RW on my computer and I can read the files just fine, but when I go to one of the computers labs or the smart classrooms, I can't read it, why?

A. Formatted CD-RWs use what is called a packet-writing program. These programs are put out by different software companies and they do not always use the same standards. As a result, what can be read is not always consistent. Most of these software companies do include the necessary files on the formatted CD-RW to make them readable on other computers. The trick here, however, is that because these are system files, only members of the IT staff are able to install the necessary files.

Q. I just saved a paper I sent to myself by e-mail. Now I can't find it. Where did it go?

A. Unfortuantely, you paper is gone. When you open an attachment in WebMail (or any other Web-based e-mail system, such as Gmail or Yahoo), you are still working within the browser. So, if you open up a Microsoft Word document, Word is actually operating inside the browser. All references are within the browser. Since the browser pulled the document from the cache or temporary internet files, that is where it will save the document. Once you exit the browser, the temporary internet files, being temporary, are purged and the document is lost. Instead of choosing "Open" select "Save" and save the file in either your network (N:\) drive or a USB (flash) drive. Then launch your wordprocessing program (more likely than not Word) and open the file. Now when you save it, the file will be in a more permanant location.

Q. Is there a way to insert video or music tracks in a Power Point presentation?

A. This question is a little trickier than it might at first appear. When it comes to audio and video presentation, one must distinguish between files and tracks. For instance, an audio CD is not organized the same way as a CD that has MP3 or WAV files. The latter is formatted as discrete files. This is why some CD player cannot play MP3s; they are expecting the audio CD format. If the audio or video is a file (such as MP3) then you can simply insert the file into your presentation as you would a picture. On the other hand, if you are using an actual audio or video clip, you must point to the proper track and Power Point will have some other program (such as Media Player) play the selection. Here is where things get tricky: the track must be located on a audio (or video as the case may be) CD loaded onto the computer (not some external CD player). This means your presentation itself must be on some other media (say a thumb drive or your N:\ drive) or CD must formatted so that part is for data and part is for audio or video. This is called mixed mode formatting and is not native to XP. There are many CD burning programs that allow for mixed mode, including some in the computer labs. If you require a CD in mixed mode format, ask for help from a lab assistant.

Q. Why is it that I cannot log onto the computers in the lab?

A. There are a number of reason why one cannot log onto the computers in one of the labs: one may have forgotten one's password, the account is locked out, or the domain is unavailable. If you have forgotten your password, you may request to have your password reset. You you don't have access to any computer, you may see Jimm Wetherbee in the Library. Remember to bring your student ID. If your account is locked out, please contact either Jimm Wetherbee at 8092 or Jeanette Bujak at 8149 to have your account unlocked. If the domain is unavailable, please call 8135 for lab computers outside the library and 8149 for office computers.

Q. How do I change my password?

A. There is full discussion of that very question in "The Campus Network Account."

Q. I cannot get past the log-in screen for certain University Web pages. What is wrong?

A. The two most common reason why one cannot get to certain university web-pages (such as the student directory or e-reserves) is that the password has expired or that the domain has not been specified. Network passwords expire every 180 cannot be changed over the web. So, if you have never logged onto a computer in one of the labs or haven't done so in a while, now might be a good time. Also, you must specify the domain as part of your username (it's a Microsoft thing). If your username is stu, you would log in as ACAD\stu. Campus Network Accounts and the University Web-Sites, contains a much fuller discussion of this topic.

Q. I am having trouble logging onto IRISLink. What is the problem and what can I do about it?

A. A common problem with logging onto IRISLink is that its Access ID and Access Code do not correspond to either the campus network or e-mail logins. If you receive a message stating that your log-in is invalid, please contact the Registrar's Office or use the Password-Reset Form. A second type of problem is that IRISLink requires pop-up to work. If your browser or a browser plug-in is set to block pop-ups, you must change the setting to allow them for http://www2.wingate.edu. Related to this is that from time to time the pop-up is minimized on that taskbar. If you see more than one instance of your browser on the taskbar, it is very likely that one of them is the IRISLink popup. Finally, from time to time IRISLink is just too busy to handle any more sessions or the IRISLink server is down. If you see a message stating that IRISLink is unavailable, please call Tim Herrin in Administrative Computing at 8150.

Q. Why is it that I sometimes cannot log off in the lab?

A. The most common reason why one cannot log off is that the profile is too large. For a fuller more--including a solution to the problem--see the discussion on Common Problems with Network Accounts.

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Comments may be sent to Jimm Wetherbee at jimm@wingate.edu
Updated: 2/25/08