Information Technology Services:

Virus Information

Virus Repair Procedure and Policy

To the Mills Community: If you use a personal PC, please read this message in its entirety. It contains important information about steps you need to take to protect your PC, and Mills policy that could affect YOU.

On average, Mills College has 500+ students and faculty and staff using our wireless networking service each day and we are pleased that this service is working for you. And we regularly have 5-15 students, faculty, and staff using our dial-in service at any point in time.

However, some of you may have PCs that are infected with one or more Windows viruses/worms and infected PCs can disrupt services on campus. Staff of Central Systems contact students, faculty, and staff individually when we see evidence of viruses and worms. We send a message to any login account using a PC suspected of being infected and we block dial-in, wired and/or wireless access until you have worked with Central Systems staff to address the problem. All other services (e-mail, class materials, etc) will be available. Follow the steps noted here to disinfect your PC and ensure that you are as well-protected as possible.

Please see the following site for a good approach to protecting your PC, including automatic notification from Microsoft when patches are available. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect , choose your PCs operating system from the pull-down list, and click on print all steps.

• Step 1 outlines firewalls. Anyone with a high-speed connection should use one. PC users may find that the pop-up messages do not offer enough non-technical jargon to know which services to allow and which to block but you learn as you go.

• Step 2 outlines the process to receive automated notices from Microsoft. Consider this step required.

• Step 3 encourages you to buy and use the virus protection software.

1. Download and run stinger.exe from the McAfee site:  Go to http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger , click on the stinger.exe link, choose 'open' and wait 10-30 seconds. Click on 'scan now'. If you see references to items being deleted, you were infected. The XP updates you install will protect you from those same infections.
2. Right-click on 'My Computer' on the desktop and Search for 'blaster.exe'. If found, please delete.

After you have finished setting up your PC, please do the following.

1. Run the stinger program again.
2. Run your virus protection software using the option to scan all files.

• Free Virus Protection