I had issues with my new work computer. The browsers were behaving normally for a little while before completely crapping out and not working, but it wasn't a network issue because my msn and gmail chat programs were still working perfectly fine.
ICT sent over a guy who used to work in our department to resolve it for me because he is familiar with our systems.
Firstly, the computer was loaded with a software image that the university apparently provided to Dell for the machines built. The software image is quite old supposedly. Secondly, the preferences for the anti-virus program are stupidly done and stuffed. They are locked to auto update only on Thursday and Saturday evenings, which people may turn off their machines before leaving work, and not have them on at night or weekends. This means the computer will never get virus definition updates. The second thing that is wrong with the anti-virus is that it also only allows you to detect viruses but is set so you can't delete or fix the virus found.
How dumb is that? You need to ask ICT to come along to fix it for you apparently. In any case, this ICT guy uninstalled the dodge software and re-installed it with no preferences, which allowed me to update the definitions and voila! I had a virus.
I have no idea where it came from, but certainly not from the internet. The ICT guy went, aha, at seeing it because he suspected it could be it as it has been appearing a lot on university machines, new machines. This makes me think it could be somehow also part of the image, thus being loaded. I don't know the name of it, but he said it's a virus that attempts to continually copy itself into \Windows\System\ directly. It generates about 500mb of RAM usage and eats system resources doing so.
With the anti-virus program fixed, we cleared the virus, booted safe mode to ensure it was gone, and that was that. Then he also installed SP3 for WinXP because the computer didn't have it, and then using AutoUpdate, patched about 280mb of Windows Update files....
I think that ICT who provide the computers through providers like Dell/HP need to update their software images and be more aware of the situation.
Now my machine seems to work just fine. Cheers~!
ICT sent over a guy who used to work in our department to resolve it for me because he is familiar with our systems.
Firstly, the computer was loaded with a software image that the university apparently provided to Dell for the machines built. The software image is quite old supposedly. Secondly, the preferences for the anti-virus program are stupidly done and stuffed. They are locked to auto update only on Thursday and Saturday evenings, which people may turn off their machines before leaving work, and not have them on at night or weekends. This means the computer will never get virus definition updates. The second thing that is wrong with the anti-virus is that it also only allows you to detect viruses but is set so you can't delete or fix the virus found.
How dumb is that? You need to ask ICT to come along to fix it for you apparently. In any case, this ICT guy uninstalled the dodge software and re-installed it with no preferences, which allowed me to update the definitions and voila! I had a virus.
I have no idea where it came from, but certainly not from the internet. The ICT guy went, aha, at seeing it because he suspected it could be it as it has been appearing a lot on university machines, new machines. This makes me think it could be somehow also part of the image, thus being loaded. I don't know the name of it, but he said it's a virus that attempts to continually copy itself into \Windows\System\ directly. It generates about 500mb of RAM usage and eats system resources doing so.
With the anti-virus program fixed, we cleared the virus, booted safe mode to ensure it was gone, and that was that. Then he also installed SP3 for WinXP because the computer didn't have it, and then using AutoUpdate, patched about 280mb of Windows Update files....
I think that ICT who provide the computers through providers like Dell/HP need to update their software images and be more aware of the situation.
Now my machine seems to work just fine. Cheers~!
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