And if you don’t see any issues with applications, then explore the other tabs like “Performance”, and take note on how heavily the CPU and RAM are being utilized. If the RAM shows high usage, then you may want to go back to the apps tab and see if there are any apps running that can be terminated. Ask the student if there are any apps running on the desktop that you can close out of, for example.
At this point, you can exit task manager and hopefully return to a functioning interface. This is a good time to save the student’s work and reboot.
If the student doesn’t have any work in progress that requires saving/backup to the network, then you can reboot the computer from the same blue screen by clicking on the power symbol in the bottom right hand side of the screen and selecting “Restart”.
If restarting the computer and having the student log back seems to resolve the issues, then you can move on. If the students experiences the same issues after rebooting the system, then there might be a deeper issue with the computer that will require further investigation. Be sure that if the student is using a application that requires a lot of CPU(processor) or RAM (temporary memory) resources, that they are minimizing the number of other applications they are running concurrently.
Sometimes staff and students will encounter issues with web applications. Perhaps the page is loading blank, or the student is having trouble logging into an application with a different username. Web browsers save a great deal of information in the “cache” that usually improve our user experience, like saving our usernames and passwords, maintaining copies of recently visited web sites locally so that those pages load faster when we visit them online. There will be times when what is saved on the machine locally, will interfere with the behavior the the web site or web application when we visit the site at a later date.
One of the easiest things we can do to address the issue is to force the browsers to reload the page directly from the server instead of from the cache. A quick Google search will tell you how to clear the cache on different browsers.
Sometimes, you may notice that a computer has been attempting to login or logout for an extended period of time. The easiest fix is to unplug the computer, wait 30 seconds, and then re-plug the computer in. Turn the computer on and test logging in and logging out. If everything functions as usual, the problem should be resolved. If not, please contact Library Systems staff.