Thank you, Mtgman! At least you don’t glare me down like I just flunked the Village Idiot auditions by being too stupid to show up!
**Eve, ** I feel your pain. Our office’s network guy is a complete idiot (I can do about 95% of what he can do my simply rebooting), so I rarely have this problem with him. However, I do a LOT of immigration petitions for techie people, and it’s frequently like pulling teeth to get them to distill the purpose of their job and half a dozen basic duties down to a couple of paragraphs. I’d be happy to listen to them go on about their jobs in great detail; I actually do have a bit of a geeky side, and I do think that stuff is interesting. I deal just fine with technical material in all sorts of super-geeky fields (medical research and polymer chemistry, to name a few), but I have the worst time by far with the IT folks.
I have nothing against them; most of my best and oldest friends are IT folks. Unfortunately, if I can’t convert the purpose of their jobs into language that makes sense to the high school-educated person at the immigration service center in the cornfields of Lincoln, Nebraska, they aren’t going to get their visas and green cards. Really, what they do isn’t any more special than what anyone else does; there must be a way to make it understandable to the rest of us mere mortals.
0x4865682E
E-Sabbath, what do you think would happen if (and don’t do this, Eve, don’t even think about it yet) Eve set her comptuer clock ahead to, say, a few seconds, or a minute, or an hour, or whatever, past when it was supposed to shut down? Would it do so or would it just be like “whoa, dude, it’s past time. I guess we skipped the shutdown sequence. Ho-hum”? That would give her a lot more time to work the thing out.
Actually, she should be able to get around the 60 second shutdown by removing the network cable or modem cable.
Once the computer lacks a connection to a network, there’s nothing to initiate any RPC activity, and so the buffer is never overrun, and the service doesn’t terminate, and the computer doesn’t suffer a fatal error. Buys you time to say, block the appropriate ports (135, 139 and 445) so that you can prevent the buffer overrun attack, so you can download Microsoft’s patch, and fix the machine.
This solution worked on several computers that I had to fix yesterday.
MOVE!!
ACK.
I think I had a seg fault and core dumped, because this was supposed to go in that postamajig.
As an alternative to Symantec’s antiviral program, I do recommend the free version of AVG.
Very functional, very nice product, very free as compared to Symantec’s price.
Me geek. Me love freeware.
iampunha: It depends on how the program is written. Most likely there is a statement that says, “if elapsed time is greater than or equal to 60 seconds (or whatever the interval is), then wreak havoc,” in which case setting the clock later won’t help. If the statement leaves out the “greater than or” part, leaving just the “equal” part, the programmer is an idiot, because computers measure time by the millisecond or even smaller units. Whoever wrote this thing is a major asshole, but not an idiot.
Nor do I ever intend to. I don’t think having this kind of knowledge is some sort of requirement. Especially when most office employees didn’t actually ask for computers to be part of their jobs, they just kind of got assigned them under the assumption their productivity would increase with a computer to use(a dubious assumption IMHO). Most people who are using computers at work are not using them by choice, nor were they trained in the field. They’re there to accomplish a specific task, the computer usage is incidental and as such, the computer training and knowledge they acquire is incidental as well. I think it is a poor practice to expect someone whose contact with computers is incidental to their job to have much knowledge of computer jargon. Even if they are exposed to it incidentally, they’re not focusing on it, nor are they supposed to be.
I actually think the onus is on the computer people to be able to explain computer issues to the layman. Well, to a degree. I don’t think it is unreasonable for a tech person to expect a user to be familiar with terms like “keyboard” “mouse” “left-click” “double-click” “monitor” and “reset button”. But SVCHOST.exe? That is pretty deep into the internals of the system. No reason at all an average user should even know it exists, let alone how to find it or tell what state it is in.
At the university I attended for my BS(Computer Science), one of the degree requirements was a semester of Technical Writing. The main thrust of this course was to teach programmers to communicate technical concepts to people of varying technical skill levels. Everything from users manuals intended for first-time users to detailed program schematics for fellow developers and debuggers. I was actually quite pleased to see that requirement on the course list. IMHO the techie community could use more people with those skills. It has been a great asset to me already in my career to be able to step into the office of a member of upper management(Director/VP level of a Fortune 100 company) and be able, with a couple of minutes on a white board, to explain concepts like proxy servers and firewalls so they could make informed decisions about projects requiring these technologies. My direct management got lots of mileage out of that one in my performance reviews and employee evaluation meetings(and my raise/bonus that year reflected it!). That kind of soft-skill is very valuable in today’s business world.
As I said earlier, I think the communication/jargon barriers will shrink with time.
Enjoy,
Steven
It shuts the computer down because Windows XP was designed to treat failure of svchost.exe as a fatal error, not because of anything to do with the system clock.
So I don’t think adjusting the system clock ahead will do anything. What you’ve got to guard against is having the buffer overrun condition happen in the first place, which means making sure there’s nothing happening with RPC.
And in the computers I’ve had to fix, temporarily unplugging their network cables until the appropriate ports could be blocked and fixes made did the thing just fine.
Eve, you make me want to go back into computer training. One of the frequent comments I got from my students was that I never used jargon that they didn’t understand, and if I had to use an odd term, I explained it to them in easy to understand ways. I hate hearing computer geeks (and I still consider myself one) going on and on with technical terms to non-geeks and rolling their eyes when they don’t understand. I usually ask someone “Look, do you want the gory details version or the Readers Digest version?” or I say “Computer no workie!” then fix it.
Users do have a responsibility to themselves to learn computer basics and stay current on virus protection and the like, but I understand how hard that can be when the people instructing you on how to do that are either lingo filled jerkoffs or have no idea what they’re talking about.
Yes, but it gets very frustrating to the computer geek who is desperately trying to come up with some way to explain to the non-geek what to do, and they have no idea what the difference between a mouse and a MHz is and don’t want to have it explained because ‘that’s too complicated’.
A lot of us get pretty damn frustrated the 50000th time we have to correct the same person who says their hard drive has 800 MHz free.
But you know it’s going to happen. Over and over and over.
So there’s only two choices: suck it up, deal with the frustration, and put on a happy face knowing you’re getting a paycheck (hopefully) . . . or get out.
Me, I got out. And not a moment too soon.
OK . . . I downloaded “Symnantec W32.Blaster.WormFix tool 1.0.0.,” which took a good half-hour; then I downloaded (I think) ZoneAlarm, which I was told sets up a “Firewall,” whatever that may be?
Now–I am told I also have to disable my Net Bios and my Filesharing, and have my ports scanned (!). I have no idea what any of that means, or how to go about it.
By the way, ione IT guy told me to click on “My Computer” and then “Properties” and unclick “System Restore” . . . Except neither “Properties” nor “System Restore” were to be found anywhere.
So, what’s with the Net Bios and Filesharing and scanning my ports (God, that sounds lewd!)?
It’s a tech-support pickup line… 
Perhaps he meant right-click on My Computer, and then “Properties”.
A firewall in a computer is a program that blocks holes a person could get into your computer through. It’s like your computer being a house with lots of doors that don’t have locks, and the firewall comes along and installs some deadbolts.
NetBIOS is a way that other computers can connect to your computer to share things like files and resources (so they can use your files and your printer). Filesharing through NetBIOS and programs like KaZaA are ways that worms spread, so turning off NetBIOS (through your Control Panel, in your Network Connections dialog box, select Properties, find NetBIOS on the list and click ‘Disable’) will prevent some of that.
Scanning your ports means looking for open doors on your computer, much like you would turn all your doorknobs to see if the doors were locked.
He definitely meant Right-Click. Then click ‘Properties’, and then ‘System Restore’ and uncheck the option to ‘Turn Off System Restore’.
Hope this helps.
Damnit.
Not uncheck.
You want to check that box to turn System Restore off.
When you’re all done fixing and patching, go back in and uncheck the box.
Always use virus and worm removal tools with System Restore turned off, or your computer will restore itself to a state with the virus or worm infection still there.
OK (breathing very slowly) what is the difference between “click” and “right click?” I only know one way to click things!
OK, I managed to get into the “Advanced” tab under “Properties” through my control panel–but I didnlt see any option anywhere for “protect my computer and network by limiting or preventing acces to this computer from the Internet,” as I was told I would. Also saw no “NetBIOS.”
There should be two different buttons and probably a scrolling wheel on your mouse.
When you ‘Click’ something, you use the mouse button on the left, and press it once.
When you ‘Right Click’ something, you use the mouse button on the right, and press it once.
Are you using a cable modem, DSL, or dialup?
I’m on a cable modem. I managed to get to “properties” but can’t find anything anywhere called “system restore!”
Jeez, I wish I could still drink . .