On Thursday when I arrived at work we started to get a few calls from people saying that their computer didn't have a start menu and when they tried to go on the Internet form the shortcut on their desktop they couldn't get on the internet - they also tried going on the network drives from My Computer and could not connect to them.
I had a look at a couple of the affected computers and the Windows XP theme had changed to classic, some didn't have a taskbar, none of the affected PCs had an IP address and when I tried to renew it at the command line it said the RPC service wasnt running. When I tried to start the RPC service in Services - I couldn't as no services were listed!!!
This was beginning to look like a 'old fashined' virus (most moden viruses seem to be after your bank details etc.) and this just looked like a malicious virus of old.
I rang the company that we purchased McAffee from and told them our symptoms who promptly rang McAffee who said they werent aware of this problem.
I was given their 'direct' number and after I had gone through the SIXTH menu telling me to choose another option I just hung up in discust.
I then went back to Google and finally found what I was looking for on (believe it or not) the McAffee website forum (so they were aware of this problem) and it turned out that they had released a dodgy update that cauases Windows XP users to loose their taskbar and network connectivity!
The resolution was quite simple, I just had to download the latest manual update from their website and then manually install it on each affected PC and then reboot it and then it's back to normal.
Just thought I'd share that with you all just in case you come across some PC's behaving in this strange manner.
I had a look at a couple of the affected computers and the Windows XP theme had changed to classic, some didn't have a taskbar, none of the affected PCs had an IP address and when I tried to renew it at the command line it said the RPC service wasnt running. When I tried to start the RPC service in Services - I couldn't as no services were listed!!!
This was beginning to look like a 'old fashined' virus (most moden viruses seem to be after your bank details etc.) and this just looked like a malicious virus of old.
I rang the company that we purchased McAffee from and told them our symptoms who promptly rang McAffee who said they werent aware of this problem.
I was given their 'direct' number and after I had gone through the SIXTH menu telling me to choose another option I just hung up in discust.
I then went back to Google and finally found what I was looking for on (believe it or not) the McAffee website forum (so they were aware of this problem) and it turned out that they had released a dodgy update that cauases Windows XP users to loose their taskbar and network connectivity!
The resolution was quite simple, I just had to download the latest manual update from their website and then manually install it on each affected PC and then reboot it and then it's back to normal.
Just thought I'd share that with you all just in case you come across some PC's behaving in this strange manner.
