new virus?

I just started working at my school's IT department. Today we've had multiple calls from people around campus complaining that they boot into windows and they cant find their startmenu or desktop icons. Deleting/Creating new account doesnt fix the problem, safemode doesnt fix the problem. Is there a new virus that is causing this? Any known fixes? The boxes are random, some personal pc's, some school pc's. All are XP(sp1 & 2)
-z3

Have you checked for the AutoHide feature? Perhaps someone is playing around? Using the right mouse button, click somewhere on the Task Bar (a blank area ideally), choose the Properties option and see if "Auto-Hide" has a tick beside it (2nd from the top)

I havent checked for that, but i can almost write that off. Its also hapening to peoples personal computers as well as random campus machines. I did have access to one person's laptop, and was unable to left click and drag, right click, use the start key or menu key, or anything else. Just desktop....

-z3

there are no icons anywhere, and the start menu hasnt been docked anywhere else. its just simply not there. Also, you cant click anywhere, it just stays regular 'ole pointer

Hrmm... Try booting into Safe Mode and then start hunting around for whatever files may not be familiar. As an added suggestion, boot to Safe Mode with Networking and have TrendMicro's Online Scanner have a whack at it. Could be something hiding.

AFAIK there isn't a virus that has this effect.

Do all these people use an account provided by school?
Sounds like somebody is screwing around with the group policies.

can you send file contains new virus because my computer in virus

Quote:

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can you send file contains new virus because my computer in virus

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Ummm.. could you re-type that again? or add some more to it? I don't know if it makes any sense. Are you saying that your computer is a virus or that you have a computer that you test viruses on?

SirDice,

They use their own accounts, and they are not regulated by school. The only Novell login's are for the campus computers. The infections have been mostly personal comps, but some of the campus computers have been infected. The head of our IT posted an announcement on the campus email saying that there is a new virus not yet recognized by norton or symmantic...you have to go a campus link here to get rid of it. Appearently its something that gets in the registry and has a little fun :-p

thanks for your help all! Yay for IT doing its job, even if it is at my small school ;-)

-z3

You can easily hide the icons by "visiting" the registry :-

To hide all the items on the desktop go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and create a new DWORD value "NoDesktop" (Without quotes) and se**** value to "1". Restart the computer for the new settings to take place.




I assume if you did this and set the value to "0" - all the icons would re-appear ??

It seems you have indeed found a new one :)

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_128448.htm

Not much info yet :(