Case Projects

1. Problem Solving: Your Turn See how many of the problems listed below you can solve working by yourself. Use books, manuals, online help, the Internet, and other resources, as necessary. Some of these problems are easier than others, so dont work too long on a problem that seems difficult; ask your work colleagues or your instructor for help. As you work on these tasks, make some brief notes that describe your experience. Do some metacognition about your problem-solving approach.

1. A user running Internet Explorer reports a message, Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage. What information about this problem can you provide the user?

2. A user gets an error message: Error Loading Kernel. You must reinstall Windows. What is the likely cause of this message? Do you really have to reinstall Windows to fix the problem?

3. A Microsoft Excel user often selects the Shrink-to-Fit feature in Microsoft Word to force a memo that is a little too long to fit on a single page. He wants to know if Excel has a similar feature that will force a worksheet to fit on a single page without overlapping to a second page. Is there a Shrink-to-Fit feature in Excel? If so, how is it used? 4. If you have a desktop computer, unplug the keyboard from your computer while it is turned off, then power up your system. During the power-on self-test (POST) bootup diagnostic tests, one of the devices tested is the keyboard. What message appears to alert the user to the keyboard problem? If you plug the keyboard back in, will the system recover without rebooting? If necessary, plug your keyboard back in and reboot.

5. Use the operating system utilities on your PC to document the following information. For each question, indicate which tool you used to find the information. a. What model of processor is in your system? b. What type of bus architecture is used? c. How much total memory does your system have? d. Is the subdirectory C:\NET in the search path? e. How is the environment variable TEMP defined? f. For the mouse on your system, what is the IRQ address and the device driver version? g. What is the size of the primary hard drive? How much free space is available on it?

6. Find a utility program in Windows that will scan your hard drive for errors (such as chkdsk or ScanDisk). (Hint: Use Windows Help and search for disk errors.) Run the error scan utility on your PCs hard drive. What problems, if any, did the error scan find? If problems exist, what is the procedure you would follow to eliminate them? What precautions should a user take before deleting lost disk clusters?

7. A user wants to know whether it is possible to password-protect a removable USB drive so that another person cannot intentionally or accidentally access confidential information if the drive is misplaced or stolen. How would you respond to the users question?

8. A user reports that she has a program named ERU.exe on her disk. She doesnt know its purpose, doesnt want to try running it for fear it will damage her system, and doesnt want to erase it for fear it is necessary for Windows to operate correctly. What can you tell her about the function of ERU.exe and who should run it?

9. A user in engineering says he has a very old program on a floppy disk that he used to run 25 years ago to perform a special analysis on steel structures. He now has a project for which he needs to run the program. The program ran previously on an operating system named CP/M. The program could be rewritten to run on a modern PC, but the rewrite would take several weeks. Is there any way to run a CP/M program on todays computers?

10. A user reports that when he runs a program on his hard drive, he gets an error message about a missing VBRUN600.dll file. He has searched the hard drive and cannot find the missing file. How can he get a copy of the missing VBRUN600.dll? What is the cost? He mentions that a friend has a file named VBRUN500.dll. Can he use it instead? If so, how?