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The Missing Home Page
 Every day when you boot up your computer you are greeted by the same familiar home page. All of a sudden, the page is gone! I has been replace by a shopping page or some other page that you neither need nor want. What happened? Did gremlins sneak in a change your home page? Was it hijacked sideways to Cuba?
Usually it's neither of those two causes. It's probably something far less exotic. One of your students may have visited a web site that popped up a box asking if they wanted to set the page as the home page and they clicked yes. Another possiblitiy is that they visited a page that actually did hijacked your home page, but not to Cuba. Either way the problem is easy to fix.
In Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options, change the Address of the Home Page back to http://www.starw.org , and click on OK.
In Netscape, go to Edit, Preferences, change the Address of the Home Page back to http://www.starw.org , and click on OK.
Crashes on the Information Super Highway
If your home page is missing, you can easily get around that road block, but if you can't get on to the Internet, you have a much bigger problem and one that is usually not a first level tech job, but here are a few things to try before calling for the calalry.
If all of your computers are down and they weren't left running from the night before, you can be 99.9% sure that the problem is out of your hands. However, if any of your computers are on the Internet, you may have a shot at getting up and running.
 The first thing to do is to check all of the networks cables. Sometimes your network cables run from the computer directly to a wall jack. In other cases there are not enough wall jacks for all of the computers and a hub has been placed somewhere in your computer area. A cable runs from the wall to the hub, ususally to a jack labeled LAN. Then the computers connect via cables to other ports in the hub that are usually numbered. Make sure all of the cables are secure.
The hub also has a power supply. There is usually a small green light on the hub that lets you know power is present. Make sure the power cord is connected to the hub and the plug is in the electrical socket.
If cables or hubs were your problem, you will have to restart your computer if you have Windows 95, 98, of NT. Aside from clearing memory problems, on a Windows 98 computer, a restart is the only way to reestablish a network connection that has been lost. If you have Windows 2000 or XP, the network connection should be available once all cables are in place. If it isn't, try a restart.
 If you are still dead in the water, it's time to check your settings. Actually, it's just as easy to check your settings before you restart. That can save you time.
Go to Internet Explorer, Internet Options, Connections, Lan Settings. When the Local Area Network (LAN) Settings box appears, the only box that should have anything in it is the box that says Automatically detect settings.
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