touchscreen with computer repair icons

Repair options for personal computers & devices

‘Tis the season for new tech toys. And it’s also perhaps a good time for a reminder about how the Help Desk can—and cannot—provide support for personal devices and computers.

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) Help Desk Team can help you diagnose hardware issues and provide repair options. The next step depends on whether the computer or device is university-owned or customer-owned.

Is it a university-owned Dell or Apple device?

Repairs on university-owned machines will be completed by Graphite (Apple) or Vanguard Computers (Dell), our local partners for hardware repair services. DoIT can facilitate the repair process behind the scenes and either Graphite or Vanguard will reach out to you for repair updates and final payment. At this time, DoIT cannot facilitate repairs for manufacturers other than Dell or Apple.

The Walk-In Help Desk (at 1210 W. Dayton Street) serves as a drop-off and pick-up location for those services—and we still offer free pick-up and drop-off of equipment from university buildings during business hours. This service can be requested by filling out our Departmental Repair Service Request Form.

Is it a personal device?

While we are no longer able to perform hardware repairs on personally-owned devices, we are pleased to provide best effort troubleshooting and advice, free of charge. You can then take your device to a repair vendor of choice. And if you’re not sure where to go for repairs, we can also get you started with a list of computer repair vendors.

Walk-in information

The Walk-In Help Desk is located at 1210 W. Dayton Street, open 7:45am-5pm, Monday-Friday, and currently no appointment is necessary.

What about software support on a personal device?

While the Help Desk doesn’t provide hardware/repair support for personal machines and devices, we do support UW–‍Madison licensed IT applications and services on these devices.

For example: We will support installing multi-factor authentication (Duo) on a personally-owned phone. However, installing applications not licensed by UW–‍Madison (such as WhatsApp) or updating the operating system to the latest version is not supported by the Help Desk.