h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*comes through on her way to the users' carrels, balancing a briefcase, a cup of tea and a cinnamon bun*

All the computers in there are working, aren't they? I need a windows box so I can do these office jobs.

Yes, they are all working. Most are multi-boot so just pick the windows option on bootup. Let me know if you have any troubles.

Hmm, I've got a new firewall that I want to play with. I guess I should get it racked up.

*Wanders in*

I've just managed to reset one of our old switches (an old 3com super stack 2 3000). Not that we use them any more as all the switches in use now are borg kit here in the new building. It was just a bit of a friday afternoon thing to do

...And not long after your help concerning favicons, look what's popped up on the bbc address!

Phil, I have an ISDN router that I will *never* use, but I keep it around bacause it is cool.

This afternoon I will be sorting out more old network cables
Why?
Well it get's me out of the office for a couple of hours of quality thinking time

I'm puzzled to say the least...

I've got a home server thingy - basically a file server with embedded Win XP on it so that it can sit and do things without being a full pc with monitor and all that.

So far so good.

I can access it, put files on it, remote control it - all fine. As long as I do it by UNC names. So, \\homeserver\xyz works fine. But if I try to map a drive to that, I get an access violation out of my regular PC's XP.

Any ideas to how to get around that?? (I think I need a mapped drive for some of my programs to get stuff from there - plus, it's a lot easier for the more PC-challenged parts of the family to always use, say, S: rather than to tell them to find the right place under network neighborhood...)

It sounds like a permissions error. And as I Don't Do Windows (tm), I can't really help you at all.

Is there some form of controll gui for it? Perhaps a web interface that will allow you to view and modify permissions? I am just guessign here.

Can someone advise me on how to rid my 'puter of a particularly tenacious virus?

The beastie in question is called W32.Gaobot.SN and has withstood attempts to shift it using Norton Anti-Virus and Ad-aware. Every time I open my Internet connection I get warnings from my Norton program telling me it's still there, even though both the Norton and the Ad-aware programs have told me that they've deleted some infected files. Following advice given on the Norton help pages, I've turned off my System Restore to stop it restoring the virus, and run my anti-virus programs again; but still the virus keeps coming back. Apparently the virus infects the 'puter's registry, and the advice page from Norton specified two registry keys that I should delete; but I've followed the paths it told me to follow (which are in my Temporary Internet Files folder) and the infected registry keys don't seem to be there.

PS: I'm using Windows XP.

sounds like you have downloaded it via a email ,i went through that for about three weeks ,after the infected file was deleted it kept coming back to shared documents folder,after finding where it was comeing back had to keep deleting it. have you tried any of the online virus scans ,macfee do one so does norton , system restore might help then it will give you an idea where the particuler little virus is.
also check out system registery ,ctl del alt and see if its got into there,which is poosible most likly

Spybot Search and Destroy might work. You can also try AVG )www dot grisoft dot com) as a secondary antivirus. It has worked well for me. If you are still unable to remove it, you will likely have to format your machine and reinstall everything.

I had to do that several years ago with both of the machines on my peer to peer network. Something came down the Roadrunner pipe that was intended for NT machines. It wasn't harmful for me, as such, but I could actually hear the hard drive as the virus kept knocking around, trying to find new connections to worm its way into. I had antivirus software and Black Ice, and the thing still got through.

And so I had to go all the way back to fdisk to get rid of it.

Well, I didn't want to mention fdisk.

It never helps that all the different AV vendors use different names for the same viruses.
Trend Micro have information on the particular problem you're seeing Ormy, with different registry keys to check for - http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM%5FRBOT%2ESN&VSect=P

The spybot search and destroy and AVG anti virus checks are good ideas as well.

You also might try the housecall.trendmicro.com (I think that's the url, I am going by memory) AV scan. As it is done through the web it won't be disabled by the virus.

Maybe give the beta microsoft anti-spyware tool a try:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

M$ bought another company's product, it was reportedly the best one on the market.

I installed it and then removed it. It is not that good.

for all the advice!

Search & Destroy found the virus, removed *something* - but then the Virus Alert came up as before when I restarted the computer. House Call didn't even locate it, after scanning for the best part of two hours. I am currently dowloading the Grisoft program, and if that doesn't get the little then I'll try following the instructions on the page Phil posted a link to.

I'm not even sure what formatting the machine and reinstalling everything means, but it sounds so risky and scary that I think I'd want to pay a professional to do it for me!

What's fdisk, and is it as rude as it sounds?

fdisk is a hard drive partitioning program. It removes all of the partitions, and ALL information from a hard drive. Without a partition, the hard drive is useless. It also used to put a partition back onto the hard drive.