Last revision January 12, 2011
The Mitchell A59 G.R.I.D. computer lab will be closed to normal use on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, for operating system and software upgrades on all the lab computers (see below).
Any files you have stored in your local profile or home directory on these computers will be erased during the upgrades.
EXCEPTION: For normal Earth Sciences grad students, faculty, and staff with an account on the School's network file server, sesfs.stanford.edu, files saved to the Desktop or to the Documents (Mac OS X) or My Documents (Windows) folders are actually saved on the user's home share on sesfs. Those files will not be erased. Also, files on the SCRATCH disk partition will not be erased.
Some students from non-Earth Sciences departments have been given special permission to use the G.R.I.D. lab because they are working on a project with an Earth Sciences faculty member. They do not have a home share on sesfs. Their Desktop and Documents files are saved on the local hard drive and will be erased. This also applies to undergraduates in Earth Sciences who have not requested a home share.
If you think you made files on the local hard drive of a G.R.I.D. lab computer that you need to save, copy them to your home share on sesfs or a flash memory drive before January 18.
The Windows partition on each computer (except Saxton, which is Mac OS X only) will be upgraded from Windows XP to 64 bit Windows 7. This will give us a more modern and better supported version of Windows that can use all of the RAM installed in each computer (XP can only use 3 GB). Mac OS X partitions will remain at version 10.5.8.
Most applications on the computers under both Windows and Mac OS X will be upgraded to the latest version.
The Dell PC "Amerigo" has 8 GB of RAM (main memory), which will now be fully available under Windows 7. Because there are no Windows 7 drivers for the Contex large format scanner that was attached to Amerigo, another older PC running Windows XP has been connected to this scanner. It is named "Hoffman" and is intended solely to operate the scanner.
No general purpose applications will be installed on Hoffman. The only application on it (other than programs built-in to Windows itself) is the "WIDEimage" scanning software to operate the Contex scanner. Use this software to scan maps and other large documents. Save the files to your "My Documents" folder, which is mapped to your home share on sesfs. Then you can retrieve the scans from other computers in the lab or elsewhere. Complete instructions for using the Contex scanner will be added to the lab website soon.
Any questions or concerns? Contact the G.R.I.D. lab manager.