Did you have trouble accessing your University e-mail over the weekend?
Two glitches in University technology caused disruptions to community members’ internet service over the weekend and on Monday.
The problems have either been corrected or are easy for users to address and fix themselves.
About 30 percent of the University community was affected by a glitch that caused user passwords to reset, said Wendy Woodward, director for technology service.
Another issue affecting users was a problem with the NetPass program, which has now been corrected, she said. NetPass inspects computers in residence halls and Greek houses for vulnerabilities that may impact the network, according to the NUIT website.
These issues may have appeared to be connected, but they were not, Woodward said.
One group of students seemed to be more affected by the changes than others: freshmen.
“Anecdotally, there appear to be a lot of confused freshmen,” Woodward said.
A message on NUIT’s main service line instructed members of the class of 2014 to change their passwords on the NUIT website. Affected users can go to it.northwestern.edu and search for “NetID password reset” to be directed to a page that will allow them to reset the password and solve the problems.
Users will have an easier time resetting their passwords if they have set security questions, which freshmen may not have done yet, Woodward said.
“This is another really good example of why we like people to set their security questions and answers,” she said. “It’s very easy to self-reset your own password if you have those questions.”
