A mysterious computer malfunction is plaguing the Hornet Bookstore, intermittently shutting down its entire cash register system and making purchases impossible at a time when students are clamoring to buy textbooks for their fall classes.

Bookstore management and campus technical staff are baffled by the problem, which first surfaced last month when employees could not get the cash registers online before opening the store for business.

“It?s frightening,” said Julia Milardovich, director of the bookstore, in a telephone interview last week. “We?re still trying to figure out what exactly the problem is.”

Milardovich?s fears come from the fact that the store?s high tech woes couldn?t have come at a worse time.

During the first week of the fall semester, 6,000 students each day brave crowded aisles and long lines to buy books.

It is easily the busiest time of the year for bookstore staff.

“My hands were shaking,” Milardovich said after the cash registers crashed for a third time last week. “I was just asking myself, ?Why now??”

The system first went offline on Aug. 10, minutes before the store was supposed to open.

Apologetic staff explained that they couldn?t take money from dozens of early bird buyers, and offered to hold textbooks until the registers were back online.

That was on a Saturday. The registers did not come back online until the following Monday.

The bookstore purchased the register network in 1996, and has regularly updated it since.

Technicians suspect that communication between the server and the cash registers is somehow being interrupted, causing a system wide failure.

The problem has become a high tech cat-and-mouse game. “We don?t know why it came back up,” Milardovich said. “Electricians come in and replace parts, hoping that it will fix the problem, but we?re just not sure.”Subsequent interruptions have been less severe.

The registers went down on Aug. 26 and again last Thursday, but only for 15 to 30 minutes each time.

But when the system failed, no one knew when?or if?it would come back up.

On average, more than 2,000 students each day make book purchases during the week before the fall semester starts, making it the second busiest time of the year.

Processing of internet purchases suffered as well because bookstore staff must still manually ring up online orders and enter credit card information.

As of last week, the network hiccups had slowed shipping by 25 percent.

“We can?t ship the books until they?re paid for,” Milardovich said.