No network access after fixed trojan and adware infection despite correct settings.

22 Aug 2006 11:15 AM

DrLaunch

I work as a IT trainee in the IT department of a highschool. Recently
we bought 60 Dell Latitude D520 laptops for our teachers. They work
well and are powerful enough. We've had some trouble that probably was
caused by human errors before. But it was fixed pretty soon.

We have let the teachers take their laptops home this summer. This has
worked well for most of the teachers but one managed to infect his
computer with trojans and adware. So after removing the trojans and the
adware, the computer can't access the internet anymore. All the network
settings are correct but my colleague in the IT department here says
the laptop refuses to accept the gateway if I understood him right.

So I'm wondering if any of you have experienced something similar and
managed to solve it or you have suggestions for how to solve it.

22 Aug 2006 12:44 PM

Malke

DrLaunch wrote:

Show quoteHide quote

> I work as a IT trainee in the IT department of a highschool. Recently
> we bought 60 Dell Latitude D520 laptops for our teachers. They work
> well and are powerful enough. We've had some trouble that probably was
> caused by human errors before. But it was fixed pretty soon.
>
> We have let the teachers take their laptops home this summer. This has
> worked well for most of the teachers but one managed to infect his
> computer with trojans and adware. So after removing the trojans and
> the adware, the computer can't access the internet anymore. All the
> network settings are correct but my colleague in the IT department
> here says the laptop refuses to accept the gateway if I understood him
> right.
>
> So I'm wondering if any of you have experienced something similar and
> managed to solve it or you have suggestions for how to solve it.

First of all, start using imaging in your school. You should have an
image of that Dell and you should not even be messing around with
cleaning the teachers' machines. They should be told to back up their
data (or you can do it for them) and you should apply a clean image to
all their laptops before school starts.

If this were a home machine, I'd suggest fixing the laptop by trying:
Start>Run>cmd [enter]
netsh winsock reset catalog [enter/reboot]

BUT it would be foolish to put this machine on your school network. Back
up the teacher's data and flatten the system.

Malke

--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

22 Aug 2006 1:27 PM

DrLaunch

I have fixed the problem thanks to the quick input of two of my friends
(skutter and efiloN) at #ormgas at the EnterTheGame IRC network. Thanks
for the input Malke, your solution would probably have worked too.

What I did was to apply WinSock XP fix from
http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlwinsockxpfix.html then I rebooted
the machine. The machine now works.

The problem was caused by the WinAntivirus/WinAntispyware trojan.

My colleague did like most head IT techies would do, hand the image
problem on to someone else. In this case the higher IT department in
the county. So he don't think this is our responsibillity. He don't
think security is important enough to not put this machine back on the
network so there's not much I can do. He thinks it's the county IT
department's responibillity to have a image for the computers. And we
don't have the image(s) required.

Because of this I have to mess around with cleaning computers. And I
have to install adititional cleaning programs because our antivirus
don't clean it all.

The problem is fixed.

DrLaunch wrote:
Show quoteHide quote

> I work as a IT trainee in the IT department of a highschool. Recently
> we bought 60 Dell Latitude D520 laptops for our teachers. They work
> well and are powerful enough. We've had some trouble that probably was
> caused by human errors before. But it was fixed pretty soon.
>
> We have let the teachers take their laptops home this summer. This has
> worked well for most of the teachers but one managed to infect his
> computer with trojans and adware. So after removing the trojans and the
> adware, the computer can't access the internet anymore. All the network
> settings are correct but my colleague in the IT department here says
> the laptop refuses to accept the gateway if I understood him right.
>
> So I'm wondering if any of you have experienced something similar and
> managed to solve it or you have suggestions for how to solve it.