IT Dept - Day 7

-- Brock, Michael and I rode with Brett to the public safety campus near Tryon Rd. We took a wrong turn trying to get to Tryon Rd, so it took us about 20 minutes to reach it. Chris and Mike came with in a separate car. A staff member at the campus named Rico helped us as well. It was 7 people total working on this work order listed below.

-- The work order was for a Criminal Justice lab in room 1331 where 24 computers had to be set-up properly on the desks. The desks that house these comuters had very small space to run the cables through to the computer case. I already dropped 2 screws in that small space because that is where the monitors are held when not on the desk. The monitors slide in and out of this small panel electronically. Each desk had a button that could control the monitors for the entire aisle. Their was also a remote control for the teacher that could slide the monitors in and out. I found this monitor layout to be pretty neat. I only managed to set-up 2 computers to make sure everything was hooked up correctly. Otherwise, I had to undo what I did to figure out what was wrong. The first computer I set-up would not turn-on, so I thought I did something wrong. For example, all the cords were not hooked up. After I got both computers set-up, I let Brett know that the computers wouldn't turn-on properly. He checked the other end of the power strips or breakers and flipped a switch which gave power to my end of the aisle.

-- Lunch.

-- Tom had a surplus of computers with Hard-Drives that he wanted erased. Tom showed me the process of booting the computer using a custom cd to erase the Hard-Drive. The custom cd was an autonuke program written by a programmer to erase the contents of any Hard-Drive called DBAN. Darik's Ban And Nuke version 1.07. The instructions of what we were to do are numbered. This was at 1 pm.

1. Load the custom cd and press F12 to launch the boot prompt for the cd to run it.
2. Type "Autonuke" to start the erasing process of the program that is on the cd. Let the process run for 1 minute and then shutdown.
3. Reboot the computer and take out the custom cd. Press F12 to re-launch the boot prompt. Instead of choosing "Boot from Cd" like last time, select "Boot from SATA Hard-Drive".
4. A message should appear stating "Invalid Hard-Drive" showing that the erase process worked correctly.
5. Shut-down the computer and disconnect the cables. Open up the case and take out the RAM and Hard-Drive.
6. Stack the computer parts and computer case separately.

Each of us ran the custom cd on three separate computers, and took the necessary parts out of them. However, only 2 custom cds were on hand.   Brock said he will erase the Hard-Drives, if I take the parts out of the computer. I agreed since it would be easier for all three of us to get this done in time before 4 pm.  Michael also sent his computer cases down my way for me to take the parts out of as well. I took 2 minute breaks during this, because I was getting dizzy (Headache) trying to concentrate on this job that Tom had given us. All three of us did this to 40 computers, including lap-tops. Brock read out the serials on the computer cases, so Michael could document them. Then Michael sat down at a computer and typed the same serials into Microsoft Excel. We finished by 3:20 pm.