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Printers, and ghosting, oh my!

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  • Printers, and ghosting, oh my!

    So, yesterday was, quite simply, hellish.

    Monday was a holiday. But, apparently someone came in, and picked up a virus. The virus was w32.Mariofev.A (according to Symantec).

    This lovely virus affected other computers, and all of them (about 7, including one belonging to the server admin) started spamming the print server with documents that couldn't be read, so the printers started spitting out gibberish. EVERY SINGLE NETWORKED PRINTER.

    But it gets better.

    We had a power outage on campus on Saturday, so, almost all the computers were turned off. Tuesday morning, people turn their computers back on, and then, the virus starts hitting every shared printer listed in the directory.

    I could go into how the networking guys disabled a network card on a computer without finding out who uses it, but I won't.

    So, yesterday was hell. It was also the day that paychecks are printed, so I had to wrangle this big printer across the room, and set it up locally on a computer.

    This morning, with all the infected computers off the network, and the printers back to normal, I had to wrangle the printer back to it's original home and set up. :P

    I walk back into the Helpdesk, where C and D were buzzing like a angry hornet nest.

    The faculty member who we all hate called in. Not wanting to walk up three flight of stairs, she took over a lab computer, and basically, made it her own. When she got to it today, all of her files were missing. She called, freaked and PISSED.

    C got a huge smile on her face when she told her that she had just ghosted those computers yesterday, and there was no way to recover the information. The faculty member EXPLODED.

    Manager got on the phone with boss, just to verify that we can't do everything. She and I head over. I explain that there's no way WE can recover the information, but we can give her the hard drive to send out to someone to try to recover the information. But that it would be very expensive, and even then, there was no guarantee that the information would be recovered. M started explaining that she NEEDED to save everything to her home drive, and offered to set up Word to default saving new docs to the H drive.

    She clicked Start and paused. I looked at the screen.

    When you're on a domain with XP, your display name shows up at the top of the start button menu. The name displayed was NOT hers.

    We logged the student out, logged her in, and there were her documents. Since she started working on them after the computer was ghosted. We saved them to her home drive, and tried our best to make it out of the lab before we started laughing our butts off.

    When we got back to the Helpdesk, C and D were both faintly upset that she didn't lose any information.
    SC: “Yeah, Bob’s Company. I'm Bob. It's my company.” - GK
    SuperHotelWorker made my Avi!!

  • #2
    Wow. What a moron.
    I, too, would have probably wished misfortune on her. But I tend to do that a lot.
    Excuse me, good sir paladin, can you direct me to your EVIL district?

    http://www.dywhcomic.com

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    • #3
      Quoth technical.angel View Post
      The faculty member who we all hate called in. Not wanting to walk up three flight of stairs, she took over a lab computer, and basically, made it her own. When she got to it today, all of her files were missing. She called, freaked and PISSED.

      C got a huge smile on her face when she told her that she had just ghosted those computers yesterday, and there was no way to recover the information. The faculty member EXPLODED.
      Oh man, I was so hoping she would lose everything. Does that make me a bad person?

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      • #4
        Quoth clowninasack View Post
        Oh man, I was so hoping she would lose everything. Does that make me a bad person?
        Y'see, I was hoping that the stuff was there, just hoplessly and utterly corrupted, you can see it but not use it!
        A PSA, if I may, as well as another.

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        • #5
          Quoth crazylegs View Post
          Y'see, I was hoping that the stuff was there, just hoplessly and utterly corrupted, you can see it but not use it!
          That is delightfully evil!

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          • #6
            Quoth clowninasack View Post
            That is delightfully evil!
            Thank you, Thank you very much!
            A PSA, if I may, as well as another.

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            • #7
              Quoth technical.angel View Post
              so the printers started spitting out gibberish. EVERY SINGLE NETWORKED PRINTER.
              The sole idea of the cost of lost toner/ink on that makes me want to puke and faint. :'(

              Quoth crazylegs View Post
              Y'see, I was hoping that the stuff was there, just hoplessly and utterly corrupted, you can see it but not use it!
              Ahhhh the good old days of a corrupted FAT table and scandisk moving every sector to FILE001, FILE002, FILE003..... Try to piece something usseable from different files, specially if the disk was wildly fragmented and most stuff was in word/excel.
              I pet animals, I rescue insects, I hug trees.

              "I picture the lead singer of Gwar screaming 'People of Japan, look at my balls! My swinging pendulous balls!!!'" -- Khyras

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              • #8
                Quoth Bliss View Post
                The sole idea of the cost of lost toner/ink on that makes me want to puke and faint. :'(
                Well, we rent our networked printers, and have about the same model across campus. The printers hold about 2.5 reams of paper. That's what was lost on most of the printers..

                Except for the wonderful few who had someone come in, see the reams of gibberish...

                AND PUT IN MORE PAPER FOR IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
                SC: “Yeah, Bob’s Company. I'm Bob. It's my company.” - GK
                SuperHotelWorker made my Avi!!

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                • #9
                  Sadly I don't find that surprising anymore.

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                  • #10
                    The virus re-infected one of the original 6 computer today. Sigh. At least it was a quick fix this time. Remote in and turn the network card off.
                    SC: “Yeah, Bob’s Company. I'm Bob. It's my company.” - GK
                    SuperHotelWorker made my Avi!!

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      My college would get reincarnating viruses almost weekly. Most of the 'safe computing practices' that IT handed out to incoming freshmen were never followed anyway (I guess they thought IT would be there to fix every little thing).

                      The only allowed/supported AV was Norton, which didn't catch half of what was flying around due to students never updating (why we didn't have a mass, non-deniable auto-update script I know not) or using versions that were ~3 years out of date. AVG/Sygate Firewall was allowed for us workstudies because the IT director knew we knew what we were doing.

                      At least twice a semester, we would get the same virus bouncing around for a week. What would happen is that the drive would be imaged (off-network) before the virus was actually removed, or the existing backup image would have a virus Format, reimage and back on network, except the virus is still there.
                      Last edited by Dreamstalker; 06-04-2008, 03:53 PM.
                      "I am quite confident that I do exist."
                      "Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense. You're just not keeping up." The Doctor

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