Throughout this year I have spent many hours and days being told by teachers that their computer is slowing down and that the computer wouldn’t play CDs or DVDs and a hundred other things. As a full time teacher all of these IT problems eat away into my lunch breaks, early mornings and after school hours. Just as I was thinking that my summer months were going to be eaten up as well I was sent help from above in the form of two past pupils aged 13 and 14 who were looking for some work experience within the school.
With the help of these angels sent from above I set out to re-install all of the Windows XP computers within the school (which is 34 of them!!!). I taught the boys how to re-install one PC and then left them at it. If they had problems they asked me, but in general they worked away and go all 34 PCs back working as if it was the year 2002! I got my PCs cleaned up and the pupils learned how to IT adminstrators.
For at least a few weeks there will be no viruses and no malware eating away at the speed of the PCs. I now know that all 34 PCs are in full working order and ready for September 2013 full of life.
So what did we do:
Backup
Prior to any clean re-install you need to back up all of the documents that you need off the computer.
Drivers
You need to download the necessary drivers for your PC. For us all of our PCs are DELL so we went to DELL Drivers download site.
The most important drivers to download are network, audio & graphics. Put all of these on a memory stick.
Printers
Record the IP addresses of the printers on your network. Go to the
Printer->properties and and then configure TCP/IP port. This will give you the IP address. Record these and put them in a file on the memory stick.
You also need to download the printer drivers. We had HP 3800 Colour printers so I just went to google and typed in HP 3800 Colour driver and got the drivers download page. Then I downloaded the drivers onto the memory stick.
Download Service Packs 2 & 3 for windows XP
Media Software
Download software to play DVDs and music. I downloaded VLC media player.
We had the CDs for Microsoft Office (use Open Office as an alternative) and our IWB software. Have these ready. Also, we downloaded Scratch and Windows Essentials for blogging and photo editing software.
If you are ready, get your Windows XP reinstall CD and follow this guide for a clean install. CLICK HERE.
After reinstalling I setup a USER account with limited rights for each teachers use. This will hopefully restrict the downloading of software to the schools PCs without my knowledge. This isn’t for everyone, but I am hoping that next year I will spend less time as an IT adminstrator and more time preparing for lessons!