Frequently Asked Questions

At times, a computer may be incapable of diagnosis or repair remotely. In these situations, the machine would be brought to our facility for an in-depth analysis. While most computer repair centers charge hourly for this service, we provide this at no additional cost to our Gold and Platinum customers. As an example, if a computer’s hard drive fails and needs a replacement we handle getting the part and reinstalling applications (if necessary); all time spent is covered under the support contract and incurs no additional cost to the client. Hardware parts, if not under manufacturer warranty, are a separate charge.

In most cases, when issues arise the computer knows before the user does. In response, it will generate “events” or logs (most of the time) that I.T. companies use for diagnosis. Unfortunately they are extremely technical which makes it challenging for the average user to understand. To remedy this, our system automatically monitors and generates support tickets for issues such as Windows crashes, disk space usage, RAID health status, patch management failures, security alerts, and more. This saves our customers hours of research and ensures problems are dealt with in a timely manner.

All of our managed services customers have access to our online ticketing system called Service Desk. This application is used to track the status of support requests that may come from our clients or automatically created by managed computers when issues arise. We make this portal available to all of our customers and their employees (if desired). It provides the ability to check on the status of support requests and serves as a direct line of communication between our clients and us.

MCS Networks deploys many different automatic scripts that work to optimize computer performance at various times throughout the day. Our management system can automatically schedule system defragmentation, junk file cleanups, registry fixes, and much more: all without interrupting the customer. Additionally, it is highly configurable: many of our clients have custom scripts to handle specific application needs and/or changes.

Microsoft releases security updates, service packs, feature packs and/or update rollups for many of its products throughout the month. These updates are critical in keeping your computers and/or servers running at peak performance as well as protecting them against the latest security threats. These patches are deployed to our testing environment shortly after Microsoft releases them; we verify that they do not cause any immediate issues and schedule them to be deployed to our managed services machines within 2-4 days. Windows Update, normally, installs only recommended updates and not service packs, update rollups for server products or larger updates to the operating system. This is due to licensing restrictions/anti-trust regulations that Microsoft is under and therefore we test and handle the deployment ourselves; eliminating the possibility of a computer missing a necessary update.

Each computer included in a managed services contract has an agent that we use to monitor the system. This application performs complete audits of the computer to include hardware (hard drive space, CPU speed, RAM) and software (Adobe Reader, Microsoft Office) with detailed information such as manufacturer and version numbers. Additionally it acts as a heart-beat monitor; if important machines suddenly go offline we are alerted almost immediately, sometimes before our customers know. Lastly, we track the age of all equipment and provide real-time inventory asset evaluations for our clients.

When businesses acquire new software it is typical for their I.T. management company to perform the installation and deployment of that software. We are no different. Our Platinum support contract includes deployment of applications such as Quickbooks, Timeslips, Act, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, and more. However, this does not include employee training for the new software. Instead, many providers have support contracts available that may provide training and/or updates. For critical applications, we recommend having these contracts in place.

Our Gold and Platinum support packages include virus and spyware removal. Typically this process involves, depending on the situation, having the computer in our diagnostic lab for removing the infection and repairing any damage caused. Virus removal and computer repair can take a couple of hours or days (depending on the extent of the damage). Each situation is different; sometimes the infection is small enough where remote support is enough to fix it and we can mitigate the downtime as much as possible.

If a computer that is under a support contract is being replaced by a new computer and the previous computer is scheduled for decommissioning, there is no need for both computers to be on the same contract. If the computer in question is covered by a Gold or Platinum contract, the costs (labor) associated with moving the client to the new PC are free of charge.

Each computer included in a Gold or Platinum support contract requires a 12-month commitment. Our Silver support contract requires a 6-month commitment.

We recommend that customer use the SSL based port numbers when setting up their email in the desired email client. Using your ISP outgoing SMTP port will result in your email addresses not automatically being added to whitelists.

At the current time the easy answer is no. Icewarp, the makers of the email server software that we use is working to develop an Outlook alternative application that will allow users to sync their emails, address book and calendars all within one application. More information will be provided one this application becomes available.

Simply place a call to our offices at 608.526.2379 and request the password be changed.

The easiest way to make a backup of these emails are to use a POP3 based email client to make a backup of these files. Make sure you specify the email client application to “Leave Copy of Message on Server.” This options is normally a checkbox on the “Advanced Options” screen.

Yes. Our Icewarp server has a Microsoft Activesync application that works well with iPhone, Android and Windows Phones. These applications are allowed on a per-user basis and must be enabled on your email account before the function will work. Please give our offices a call and we can enable this for your account.