Day 3 – A bump in the road, Safe Connect

Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet
3/14/2013 

Welcome to Day 3 of teaching and learning with a Microsoft Surface Pro Windows 8 tablet.

I did run into a couple of issues yesterday while installing software and doing the windows updates that I want to discuss so that you are aware of some potential issues and avoid them if possible.

The first issue had to do with getting signed into a Microsoft account with the Surface Pro. I have a colleague who just setup a new Microsoft account and I was showing her how to login on a brand new Surface Pro.

We could not login and it was not immediately obvious to me why as I had done this thousands of times before on other PC’s. This was a brand new Surface Pro that was fresh out of the box.
 

Since I could not login with the Microsoft account I setup a local account on the Surface Pro and was able to login and diagnose the problem. I was able to install some software including Audacity and Office 2013. I also tried to do the Windows Updates but received an error message that the Windows Updates could not be completed.

There seemed to be something wrong with the setup so I thought this would be a great time to try the new “Refresh Your PC” feature new to Windows 8. More on that story tomorrow…

Turns out we were using the university wireless network that has some safeguards to prevent just anyone from connecting to the network. Our university uses a product called "Safe Connect" that is a client you must download onto your machine before accessing the university network. The safe connect client is similar to what you see in hotel rooms where you have a splash screen that you must accept the “terms of use” before connecting to the network.

We could not login to the Microsoft account since I had not loaded the safe connect client and it was blocking network access so the username could not authenticate, doh!

Cart before the horse.

Since the Surface Pro uses Windows 8 Professional it is treated just like a regular PC by the network. All PC’s must use Safe Connect before being allowed onto the university wireless network.

So I loaded the Safe Connect client and was almost home free. I say almost as the university also requires an up-to-date antivirus program on all computers on the network so we loaded the approved antivirus program from the university software download page.  

All was now good as Safe Connect was loaded and the Surface Pro had the latest antivirus definitions.

Since we were now connected to the wireless network my colleague was able to login with her Microsoft Account. No more problems. I had her copy some pictures to her Skydrive and introduced her to the cloud computing options available with her new Microsoft Account including the free Office Web Apps.

Since she had never used Windows 8 before I gave her a five minute overview on using the Surface Pro tablet and she was on her way.

Until next time...
Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, PhD

 Follow me on Twitter @tomgrissom

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