Change has been a major source of headaches for students who have tried to access their new LiveMail account since the June 24 cut-off of student access to the utep.edu domain.

UTEP’s Information Technology department (IT) said that activation woes have accounted for 90 percent of the phone calls that the Help Desk has received since the domain change.

One recurring problem the Help Desk encounters is that students often lose their new e-mail’s activation code when they close the window displaying it. Luis Hernandez, assistant director of Information Technology, said those students could have avoided problems by reading more closely.

“We tried to simplify it as much as possible,” Hernandez said. “Another problem that we’ve seen is that students begin the process but do not complete it and their passwords get reset at some point. Since they don’t know the password they can’t get into their accounts and we don’t have a password for them.”

IT said they did expect activation dilemmas, but one problem that was not anticipated was the difficulty in synchronizing students’ passwords from the previous domain to the new one. IT hoped that students would not have to change their password to access their LiveMail account. Currently, IT is developing a list of students’ names whose passwords cannot be synchronized. This list will be sent to Microsoft, who will reset the password for those students so that IT may be able to complete the synchronization.

Freshman education major Esequiel Reyes didn’t activate his account at all and said he would only do so if his professors requested it.

“I just don’t see the need to activate it or check it if the professor is having us use WebCT instead,” Reyes said. “In my opinion, WebCT is probably just as effective. Everything has been fine so far, and to be quite honest I really don’t know anything about LiveMail or how to activate it.”

IT sent out e-mails about the domain change, posted flyers on the walls of different buildings on campus and sent postcards to students. Reaching incoming freshmen and transfer students has been more difficult.

“The problem with new students is that we can’t communicate with them unless they attend student orientation,” Hernandez said. “We need to work with other departments on campus so that the students can get the information they need.”

With LiveMail, students will no longer be able to easily look up e-mail addresses for other students or professors and will instead have to go to the UTEP Web site, www.utep.edu, and click on the Directory and Maps link.

“Although it did take me a couple of times to activate my account because I had to go back and reread the instructions, the main problem I had when I activated my LiveMail account was that I had to add my contacts one by one,” creative writing major Eduardo Martinez said. “I couldn’t just go and search for my contacts’ addresses like I used to with the old account.”

Martinez said he was also frustrated with what he thought was a longer page loading time.

Hernandez encourages students to contact the Help Desk if they have any problems.

“We’re working on solutions,” Hernandez said. “If students have problems, they should contact the Help Desk and read the instructions very carefully. If the students feel more comfortable with changing their preferred e-mail address from the LiveMail account to another one that they can easily access, then they can do that as well.”

UTEP students can now elect to receive university messages through an alternate preferred e-mail address by logging onto my.utep.edu and clicking on the My Info link. Then students should then open the My Student Information link. The page that opens will contain a link for students to update their e-mail.

“Once we get over the hump, everything will be okay,” Kenneth Pierce, director of Information Technology said. “We need to take care of the students who are re-entering so that they can access their e-mail without any problems at all. As for the new students, we need to make sure that they don’t have any problems activating or accessing their account.”

The Help Desk may be contacted at 747-4357 on campus or at 747-5257 off campus, Monday-Friday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Students may access their e-mail through mail.live.com, through hotmail.com or through the LiveMail link at my.utep.edu.