information for your visit to the pcsc
The Personal Computing Support Center is a help desk facility located at 111 Cummington Street in the basement, room B19. It is open for phone support during our regular office hours. We also welcome walk-ins. However, if you do call to make an appointment you will be more certain of a shorter wait time.
In-person support
The PCSC offers free support to Boston University students, faculty, and staff. We sometimes call this a "hardware appointment" because you will be bringing in your computer hardware (not because we do hardware repair).
What to bring: Whether
you are coming as a walk-in, or because you have an appointment, we
want to remind you to bring...
-Your computer! (just the CPU if you are bringing a desktop machine)
-Your power cord
-Your system software if you have it. If you don't have it, we
will do our best to help you but may reach a point at which
we can no longer proceed. In that event you will need
to get the software from home, or purchase a copy.
What to do in advance: If at all possible, you should back up important files before visiting the PCSC. This is especially true if a reformat of your machine is a possibility. We will not supply blank CDs or DVDs for you, and our policy excludes backing up music, movies, or large quantities of data in general. It is simply too draining on our resources. We will provide information on how to back up such data, though, and we will back up business or academic data. You are strongly encouraged to do as much data backup as possible in advance. If you have an external drive, please consider brining it. If you do not have an external hard drive, please consider purchasing one: computer data is increasingly essential in today's world, and keeping a backup copy of yours is critically important.
You will be asked to stay: Bring anything you might
need to maintain yourself and your computer during (potentially)
several hours, and allow enough time for that stay when you walk-in
or schedule the appointment. If you require drop-off repair service,
we will not be able to assist you and will, instead, refer you
to the paid drop-off service provided by University
Computers.
Why we ask you to stay: The Personal Computing Support Center is an open environment. We have no facility for checking in, tracking, and securely storing your personal computer, and we work on many computers each day. We ask that you stay with us for security reasons and to supply passwords or other information as needed. We also want to involve you in the learning process and the decision-making. Being present is a way of holding the place of your computer and its problem, guaranteeing that we resolve it before taking on something else. Please note that if you do have to leave your machine with us for a short time, we cannot be responsible for its safety.
If you come as a walk-in: Please note that we reserve the right to turn away any walk-ins if the demand for our services is too high at that time. In that event, we will assist you in making an appointment to come back. Walk-in service works on a first-come, first-served basis. If the center is not crowded, you will be seen as soon as possible. If we are busy, you will be waiting in line.
If we need to reformat your machine: Our consulting staff will do everything possible to resolve the problems on your machine without data loss. Having said that, in this era of viruses and spyware there are often times when a complete reformat is unavoidable. If your machine is in this situation, you will be given a number of options: to do the reformat entirely on your own, to pay for it to be done at University Computers, or to do it on your own but in our office (with as much guidance and help as we are able to give you at that time). In other words, if we are not busy, we can sit and do it with you. If we are busy, we will let you make an appointment to do it with us, or we will let you sit in a nearby space, get you started, and help as much as possible (while we simultaneously help someone else too). Please see our related page for more information on the reformat process.
Our consultants
When you call or visit the PCSC you will be speaking with a Boston University student who has been hired because of his or her expertise in some aspect of computing. At any given time there are approximately ten students in the room. While helping you, they have each other as a resource, and also have immediate access to a full-time staff consultant.
On-site support
For students with a desktop computer who are living in a Boston University residence, we may be able to do an on-site visit to assist you with your problem. This is not a guaranteed service, but it could be offered as an option when you call to make an appointment.
Faculty and staff will often find that they can get on-site support from a local IT person or group.
Should I go to the PCSC? or to University Computers?
PCSC services are provided free of charge to members of the Boston University community. However, the PCSC is only a software support and consulting facility. We don't do hardware repair and we require you to stay with your computer.
Another OIT department, University Computers (UC), is a traditional computer store and manufacturer-authorized repair center. For an hourly labor fee, plus the cost of any necessary parts, students may drop off their machines at UC and pick them up later, repaired. UC's services include reformatting and reinstallation of software.
UC and the PCSC are both IT departments. If you are referred between them, one will make sure that the other is aware of your incoming issue.
