Dell Optipelx Gx 755 unresponsive usb after restart no keyboard or mouse?

Had this one happen today in our computer lab of all places. This is a Gx755 Full tower. This is more a business machine but some home consumers might have one so this is for every one that might have one.
They turned all the 755s on this morning and one of the had no keyboard or mouse. Did the standard unplug and plug into a different usb port to no avail.
Restarted the computer which did nothing.
Was able to use keyboard to hit f2 to get into bios and confirm that all usb ports were turned on.
I did some research and found out that Dell sets a side the two ports beside the Ethernet adapter to use primarily for keyboard and mouse. I plugged them both into those ports. Shut it down again, then unplugged it. I pressed the power button for 15 seconds to drain any phantom energy(energy that was collected in computer and can help save bad settings some times) then plugged it in and powered it on.
It booted up to windows 7 and keyboard and mouse worked just fine like there had never been a problem before.

I hope this helps if you are having this issue and its confusing to you as it was to me. Thanks for reading and keep geeky.

GX Optiplex 760 Green Blinking lights no power info!

Hi again;
This is going to be for the more advanced people and any one that might have a GX 760 Small Form Factor.
I am writing this because after THREE bleeping 760 have just died in the last month. Thats a lot for our campus and I am afraid more will follow. I am writing this to let tech and people know what I found out.
The symptoms:
You come in in the morning  (always seems to happen at night) and the 760 is off. You hit the power button but nothing. You kneel down to look at it and see 2 leds blinking on the bottom bar. Network and HD I think.
Possible Temporary cure.
If this happens with all 3 it has been the power supply. I am not saying this is the only thing but with ours it was PSU. A temp trick that worked on two of them(didn't think to try it on the first one) is the 760 SFF has a PSU test button on the back next to the power plug with a LED light above it. Little black button, Pressing this will test the power supply if green it "should be ok"
Press it and if you are lucky after holding it down for about 20 seconds the computer will stay running and boot up like it should. After doing some research I found it can be other things like the DVD-R driver or hard drive that set this off and just by changing the hd or unplugging the Disk Drive will allow the computer to come on and work normally.
Ours didn't do that so there is that.
If yours does come on back up what you can. The first one that we did this on lasted 3 days and then died again for the last time. The first 2 we have replaced the power supply in and they are working just fine now. This last one we are hoping to get a power supply in before it keels over.
I really hope this helps some one and I hope you have more luck then us but ours died or are more than likely going to to die. If you have some of these watch them. I don't know what causes it because they have been from 3 completely different places. One was a librarian's computer that did internet and scanned books, another a secretary, and the last one was from a classroom where the kids rarely get on the computers. They just go and dell doesn't seem to have a answer for it right now.

I really hope this helps some one out and good luck to you.

My view on clean up utilites for Mac and Windows.

Hello again;
I got asked this question by a friend the other day and thought I would share what I told him with you.
What clean up program for mac should I use on my Macbook Air? The answer really is you shouldn't need one at all.

For the most part Macs run perfectly. They don't have a lot of problem with getting junk files and what not and really if you do any research most clean up programs for mac are smoke a mirrors. They tell you these wonderful things they do but in reality they only do what any normal person could do any way. There is really only 3 things you can do to speed up a mac and if those don't work sorry to say there is might be a hardware issue if those don't get the results you desire.

Windows on the other hand does need these programs. Windows by is own creation is not a very efficient system. It leaves files around after a uninstall and doesn't delete old registry errors. And if you don't know what you are doing or deleting in a registry you can be asking for some trouble for sure. So by all means there is a need for these programs for Windows.

Thanks being said you do need some sort of antivirus for Mac. You maybe thinking wait that is one of the selling points it doesn't get viruses. This is some what true. Virus are rare on macs but right now its only because they aren't as popular as windows. And you can look it up online if you want and you can see reports made for the rare Mac bugs shall we say.

I am also working on a easy guide for how to maintain your mac for those mac owners and hoping to put that out pretty soon. Only few things you can do but they are kind of hard to get too but easy to do once you find the area you need to be in. Thanks again for reading and stay geeky my friends.

How to make default Icons for all users on Mac OS X 10.6 or later

Hello;
This is for the more advanced users I am afraid. I ran into this problem at my campus. I needed to have a set of Icons ready for for students so they could log into a program called Reading Counts. They could navagate to it via web but getting 5th grades to do that 20 times over 8 times a day was a bit to much i should think. This is a guide on how to make icons available to every student aka user on your mac. This is also by no means the only way it is just the way I found and figured out and it works for me. I hope this will help any one looking for how to do this.
This is also from my personal notes so formating may be a bit rough I will try to clean it up some.

First: You need to get the icons you want to give out and copy them such as shortcuts and web short cuts. 

Then in finder click go and go to folder and type /System then click library, then go to userTemplates select it and hit command+I to get info. Drop down permissions, and by putting in admin password give your self permission to read and write. 

Then after that go into it and look up english.lprog then go to desktop and do the same thing as before to give your self permission. 

Now you are at the default desktop. Any icons or shortcuts you put in here with show up on the desktop of any new first time user. 

To make sure this works with all new users delete all user files by going into finder, clicking macbook hard drive click users and move all user files to the trash except any that need to be saved, shared, administrator, and the current user. 

The next time some one logs on it will show those icons.

I really hope this helps it took me about 1.5 hours to do this on 25 mac book unibodies. I am not the fastest person in the world either and I could only do 2 at a time in front of me. I really do hope this helps some one it sure did me.

MobiView from eInstructions Pen Not working

Hello all as I promised something for the more tech inclined people. I wanted to write a short post about a issue I had with a teacher at my campus using the MobiView annotation pad. These things are really cool when used with a projector and our macs they allow a teacher to remotely control the screen as if she had it in her hand. But you most likey know that and why you are reading this is because it is not working and you want it to. Well we had this happen to 2 pens at once from two of our systems. We were on with customer support and after 2 hours they said it must be the pad sorry it out of warranty please send it back and we will charge you to fix it. My director wouldn't tell me how much so it was bad lol.
Long story short in both of them it was the battery in the pen!!!. Its a AAAA battery! Yeah I didn't know they made that size either. What had happened is the had mildly corroded and wouldn't make contact. I noticed that the pen would sometimes charge and then wouldn't when on the charging pad for it.
To get to the battery of the pen you have to push in the tab on it and then slide the back park that connects to the lanyard off  then you will see the electronics part of it. You can take the battery out and either clean it or replace it if you know where to get it. I know ebay sells them. I just cleaned this one with a screwdriver I had to scrape it clean. Put it back in and then plug it into the charging dock and it should start charging if not you have something else going on sorry:(.

I really hope this helps someone this drove the teacher, my director, and I nuts for the better part of 3 days trying to figure this out. Thanks and good luck.

Been A while

Long time. I have been very busy getting my campus ready for the start of school and ending school last school year. But I am back I am hoping to be able to post on this more regularly and keep up the good info and keep it coming. I have also had a bit of a AH HA moment and realized I may have been a bit to narrow with this blog to start with. As such I will still try to keep up my post for everyday computer users but also I think I will start typing some about my day to day at the school for those issues that other tech might be researching also. I don't want to leave any one out and as always I will allow comments to all my post. I welcome constructive criticism as well. What I mean by that if you flat out say i'm wrong but have buttkiss to back it up then that won't be looked on to well. By the same token options are welcome too. So welcome new and old readers and have a great day and enjoy!

PS I know my writing is not that great. I do make grammar errors and I am sorry but I work in computers and with English teachers but I am not a English teacher so please keep that in mind thanks.