Who are we?

The IT Service Desk at the Knowledge Commons provides convenient, FREE access to hands-on IT help with your personal computers or mobile devices for all Penn State students, faculty, and staff. We can fix your personal device! 

 

Service Offerings

  • On campus wireless connectivity for laptops, tablets, and mobile devices
  • Operating systems reformat and upgrades
  • Hardware diagnostics & installation support
  • Assistance with data transfer and backup
  • Software installation and troubleshooting
  • Virus/Spyware detection and removal
  • PSU email support
  • IOS consultations and reformatting

 

Office of Student Conduct – Copyright Referrals

The IT Service Desk @ Knowledge Commons (SDKC) has partnered with the Office of Student Conduct (OSC) to provide technical consultation and support to students having violated AD20 copyright policy for the second time. IT Service Desk staff will work with the student to remove illegally obtained files and reconfigure or delete file sharing programs as requested.

This service is provided during our normal operating hours. No appointment is necessary.

On average, each consultation takes about 15-20 minutes. Please allow for additional time if you will be requesting assistance configuring peer-to-peer clients and managing files.

Before coming to the IT Service Desk please review the following list to ensure you are properly prepared:

Have your OSC paperwork with you. It must be presented to SDKC staff to begin the consultation.

Should you want help configuring your machine or removing files bring your devices as well as any power cords to safeguard against power loss.

Security Operations – Compromised Machine Referrals

Office of Information Security (OIS, formerly SOS) is responsible for addressing Penn State’s information technology security issues. Should OIS determine that a machine connected to the Penn State network has been compromised by malware allowing remote control of a system, it shall have its network privileges temporarily suspended. Only after a full system reformats and appropriate safety measures have been taken will privileges be restored. Additional information can be found at the OIS website.

The IT Service Desk @ Knowledge Commons is the official contact point for users living off campus in need of help reformatting their computers to meet OIS network guidelines. Students living in campus dorms are required to contact Rescom for help.

No appointment is necessary and you may drop off your computer with us, we will contact you once work has been completed. Before coming to the IT Service Desk @ Knowledge Commons, please review the following list to ensure you are prepared:

Power Management – Since formatting hard drives is time intensive it is vital that you bring your laptop power cord.

Back up your data – Backing up your files to an external drive will ensure that your data is not lost. If you do not feel comfortable performing the backup yourself please bring an external hard drive or thumb drive of sufficient capacity along and we will back up data for you.

If possible, bring your original discs – OIS guidelines require a full system reformat. This can be from your laptops System Recovery partition if you have one. However, there is always a chance that partition has also been infected. Having your original install discs provides us an alternative if your System Recovery partition is corrupted. Should you not have the original discs you may contact your system’s manufacturer for a copy, or purchase a new operating system copy from the Penn State Computer Store (at the educational price) or another retailer.