Self-Support
Help Yourself!
As outlined on the campus support page, we are glad to help you with any computer problems you might have. Both of these help desks employ full-time staff to help you with everything from spills to viruses.
That said, we feel that it is beneficial for students to be able to perform routine troubleshooting and preventive maintenance to keep their laptops working. That is a main focus of E115: Introduction to Computing Environments, a course required of all freshmen in the college. See our Learning About Your Laptop page for more.
Resources
Here are some of the resources that we suggest you use to keep your system running well.
- Trend Micro Antivirus - All computers connected to NC State's network must have an antivirus client installed. This is the best proactive step you can take against unnecessary downtime and headaches. As of Spring 2009, NC State gives Trend Micro AV free of charge to all students, faculty and staff.
- Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-aware - This software scans your computer for malware that you may have downloaded by mistake. The new Trend Micro AV might eliminate the need for this additional software to guard against malware. We will keep an eye on malware outbreaks in the future to make sure that it does before we stop recommending these packages.
- Built-in firewalls - The current operating systems all have built-in firewalls to protect against hacking and sneaky malware. These firewalls are enabled by default, and you want to make sure that they stay that way.