Plug-and-Play and Wizards Make Most Things Easier

Over the years, computer technology, software and networks have become more user friendly… more intuitive, more robust and just easier for people to use. Overall, this is a very good thing for most computer users. For example, before USB, you’d have to know about IRQs, memory addresses and other low-level things in order to make any new device work on your computer. Want a new hard drive installed, now? Just plug it into the USB port, and you’re off to the races.

Even program installations and configuration have become much simpler. Last night, I started the download for the free version of AVG for a friend and didn’t want to wait for it to complete. My friend asked, “what do I need to do to get this done?”.

The answer was “next, next, next, finish”.

Until There are Problems

Unfortunately, making things that simple can be a bit of a double edged sword – especially if/when something does go wrong or breaks. Because people are no longer required to understand what IRQs, memory addresess, drivers and directory paths are, it makes it very difficult for them to troubleshoot their problems on their own.

• Why is my Outlook not connecting all of a sudden?
• Why is my network drive telling me I don’t have rights anymore?
• Why is my display different today?
• How come the letter on my external hard drive is different today?

Unless you grew up in the days of DOS and hardware-level settings, you probably don’t know where to start with these issues.

“HELP! My Outlook Data is Gone.”

A perfect example of this is the case of a client who “lost all of her email” just a few weeks ago. This client utilizes her Microsoft Office applications within a Citrix environment. As most people who manage Citrix environments know, profiles (user personal settings) don’t always load properly. This morning was no different for this particular client.

In an attempt to correct the problem herself, she reset her Outlook archive to a local archive. Then, after completing an archive of her email, she logged out of Citrix.

Naturally, her local archive file did not return, because she was using a temporary user profile. This prompted the EMERGENCY call into our helpdesk, and I began to untangle the mess.

It took quite a bit of time to restore her email without going to the backup from the previous night, which would have cost her day’s email correspondence.

We Know You Were Just Trying To Help, But….

There’s old adage that says a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Just as a precaution, be sure that you truly know the consequences of what you are doing. The above client could have saved both of us about an hour, if she had just picked up the phone and called her helpdesk at the first sign of “strangeness”.

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