Last Updated 5:55PM
As of 6:00PM All DoIT Labs in the Engineering and ACIV buildings have been re-imaged and are available for classes.
DoIT staff have developed a solution to address the issue created by McAfee's bad DAT file from earlier this afternoon. The fix must be implemented locally from the affected Windows XP machine.
UMBC DoIT staff will be available starting at 7:00AM tomorrow to begin fixing departmental machines. We will be allocating our staff to departmental buildings in order to provide the broadest support coverage possible.
Self-Service Options Available:
1) Pick-Up A Fix CD from the UMBC HelpDesk Tomorrow Morning.
- Insert the CD in the affected machine
- Open the contents of the CD
- Double Click on the "CopyExtra.bat" file
This script will update the McAfee DAT file and replace the damaged or missing "svchost.exe" file.
NOTE: Please limit to 1 CD per department as we have limited reserves of CDs
2) Download the Fix Files onto a CD
- Download ALL 4 files from HERE
- Right Click on Each File and Choose Save As To Download
- Place them on a CD
- Follow the steps in Option 1 above
NOTE: You may try placing the 4 files on a USB storage device but we seen several affected machines that would not recognize USB devices.
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We may need to visit your UMBC machine to fix this issue. In order to know who was impacted please submit a ticket via Help in myUMBC.
Today the UMBC campus experienced widespread computer difficulties; symptoms include spontaneous rebooting of machines and loss of network connectivity. Reports of similar issues across the nation lead us to believe that we are sharing in the problem created by a McAfee virus definition update that was pushed out at approximately noon EDT. UMBC DoIT staff have independently confirmed this. We are testing several resolutions to this problem, and are hopeful that a solution is forthcoming from McAfee. We will keep you updated as we develop plans to resolve this issue.
At this time there is not much that you can do to resolve this problem. We ask for your patience in this matter. Once we know more about the proposed solutions we will share them with the campus community.
FAQs
What Machines Are Affected?
Based on the most up to date information available we believe this issue is only affecting Windows XP SP3 machines running McAfee 8.7i. All other versions of Windows appear to be unaffected
Is There Anything That I Can Do to Fix My Machine?
At this time we are unaware of any simple fixes for these machines.
My Machine is Windows XP SP3 But Did Not Break, Should I Be Worried?
We have removed the bad DAT file from our servers and temporarily blocked access to the off-campus McAfee repository. We did this to keep machines that had not downloaded the bad DAT from doing so.
Are the Campus Labs Affected?
Yes, the majority of campus labs run Windows XP SP3 with McAfee 8.7i. DoIT staff are currently re-imaging as many labs as we can. We are also working with departmental IT staff to re-image labs. We are estimate that by 6PM tonight the DoIT labs in ECS.