I hate U3 and/or my work computer

[Trooper110]

Ok, so I can download and install things on my local computer at work. I've been catching up on Heroes Season 2 at home, getting ready for season 3. Being as we work for the State Police, we have to have 24/7 coverage here, so they always take a few volunteers to work on holidays. Well, family get togethers were the past 2 days, nothing going on today, I get payed doubletime, and I figured I'd watch the rest of Heroes and read my book, take 5 or 6 calls the entire day, which is usually my first 20 or 30 minutes.

I come in to work, sit down, get all logged in to the dozen and a half things I have to log in to, plug in my thumb drive (I've done this before, but it was with my Sony drive which is a simple flash drive with no extras...never had problems) and I can't get Windows to recognize the darn thing.

I started looking around and doing research, figure it HAS to be something to do with U3 being installed on it. Well, I start looking around The Google and can't come up with anything good. I download U3 and attempt to run it, but it looks like Corporate is blocking the port that U3 uses to connect to the net for information, so the install fails, and I can't even find the drive to load it off of there. Btw, Windows detected and installed it just fine, the drive that is, just never got the U3 loader stuff.

Doesn't exist in MyComputer, doesn't exist in Windows Explorer, but the Hardware Manager finds it without any problems. I can also see if it I look at properties for removal media drives. CD-ROM, Floppy drive, and Creative SanDisk U3 USB drive are all there. But I still can't find it anywhere I can access it. And yes, I have all the folders set so I have access to every file and folder in them, etc, etc. I can't stand not having the fullest access to everything that I can.

I start playing around with the Run dialog. Can't access E:\ or F:\ from the Run dialog. Can't get E:\LaunchU3.exe to run from the Run dialog. Weird. Well, I load up the command prompt figuring I'd play around with things and see what happens. I type in e: and what do you know but it hits the e:\ drive no problems. dir command pulls up 3 files/folders including LaunchU3.exe.

I run LaunchU3.exe from the command prompt, it loads up just fine. I open up the U3 menu and try to browse the disk. Well, it pops itself over to the C:\ within 10 seconds of me opening it (default opens in Windows Explorer). And the U3 drive is again not appearing in Windows Explorer. I shut it down, open the U3 menu and open to the drive again. This time I quickly double click the Heroes Season 2 folder, and drag the files to my desktop.

They start to copy and once again Windows Explorer doesn't really show the U3 drive. I have a disk image like the other disks in the display, but no indicator it's a real disk. Next thing I know it's kicked me out of the directory again and to my H:\ drive, which is how our personal network drives are labeled.

Long story short, I got the files to the desktop, I can safely finish watching them this afternoon, and I hate U3 and/or work policies, lol.

[WalkinTarget]

LoL .. suck it up and keep your home stuff at home !! Its those 'techno savvy' guys like you that make IT have nightmares, dude !

If I had a dime for every person that claims to be savvy with their home PC but have never used the 'RUN' line in their lives ...



We now have the ability to scan user PCs and see what the uses have or try to install, and its sad that they think it is their PC, when in fact it is a work PC that they need to function, but if they hose it, IT ends up being called in to fix what they shouldn't have to fix in the first place.

/rant off

[Trooper110]

Well, we do have local admin rights to the machine that we use everyday, not to any other machine in the building though. Honestly, they really shouldn't even give that to us. I can tick off on one hand what I've installed though... VLC. FireFox, latest version of AIM (actually require AIM on all computers as we use it for communication at work), AusLogics Disk Defrag since this computer is so old that it takes an overnight run with Windows Defragger if I want to use it for work purposes, and CCleaner.

The IT staff can and does check what we install here, so I have to assume that I don't have anything declared contraband. I have no plans to install any games or the typical junk like screen savers that you get your malware from. It's just nice to have access to things when you want it, like today.

And honestly, troubleshooting some issues with end users would be hard to impossible without some access to more powerful tools. We can't remote in to PSP computers because of all the security they have on them, and if I couldn't follow along and do what I'm telling some trooper or sergeant to do, in some cases I'd be more lost than they are. Gotta balance out potential risks to benefits, and in the case of an IT help desk, well, I think overall it's more beneficial to give us some leeway.

You also have to remember WT, that we're the tech support for the PSP, and the other desks we have serve as tech support to other groups. So *technically* we should know what we're doing and not screw anything up.

We do have an internal IT department, but they handle mostly hardware issues, or the PGP installs that go bad, as they have all the reimage disks, and the network issues since we only have access to a few of the network shares and accessability options, and no direct access to any of the servers.

[DougBob]

Trooper, one thing I notice at work when moving files from home to work on my thumb drive. The first time I tried using my 8GB thumb drive at work I thought something was wrong since I couldn't see it getting mapped but I could see it in the Drive Manager.
Well come to find out for some reason the thumb drive was trying to use the same drive letter as one of the currently mapped drive i.e. it was trying to use H when H was already mapped for my home directory as part of the domain.
Once I saw this I simply assigned a drive letter using the Disk Manager and it worked fine. Removed it and the next time I put it back it everything was fine

[Trooper110]

It was using E:\ and F:\ for the U3 partition and the physical drive location. Neither of which is mapped on my computer. The only drives I have are A:\, the floppy of course, C:\, the hard drive, D:\ the DVD-ROM drive, H:\, my personal network drive, and the S:\ which is our PSP network share. I thought about that, but it definitely wasn't trying to map to one of the currently mapped drives. And like I said, I could get it to access through the command prompt and forced the U3 manager to load, I think that our network security running on these things just doesn't like the U3 program and/or manager. I ejected the disk through the U3 manager after I was done, and for some reason the manager wouldn't close then either, even after I removed the thumb drive. I had to use Task Manager to manually shut down the process. I actually ran in to drive mapping issues at home once when I had some drives mapped out in an odd manner, so that was one of the first things I checked. Probably forgot to include it in my initial rant

[WalkinTarget]

Aww Troop, you know better than to think I'd purposefully give you grief !! Honestly, I was ranting about the teachers I work with, so don't take me seriously, just let me blow off some steam after my first week of being blasted by IT requests from the n00bs.