Infected!

On Monday my counterpart did not show up for work. I was on my way to teach my math class when his computer class started coming in the lab. I told them that they did not have class today and realized that it was time to talk to my principle about my counterpart. I told her everything that I have witnessed over the past 7 months. She said that she already had her eye on him and everything I was telling her was confirming what she had already assumed.

On Wednesday I came into the lab and realized that there was something seriously wrong with a couple of the new computers and with the teacher’s computer. They were freezing up and making copies of files and folders that could not be deleted. I started taking note of the programs that were showing up as “not responding” and did an internet search. My suspicion was right: the computers were infected with a serious virus. I spent hours on the net trying to figure out how to get rid of the virus. I was at the computer lab until 9 PM – still with the problem unresolved. I arrived to the lab early Thursday morning and turned off the network. I frantically ran several virus checks and programs on all the computers I could and found several viruses on a few of the computers. Because the computers that were infected were on the network, most of the computers in the lab became victims of the virus. However, some of the computers are so old that they don’t have enough memory to run virus software (some only have 16 MB of RAM!!). I am still at a loss of what I am going to do with those computers, but for now, I have to remove all the computers that are not up to date with virus software off the network. That means we will only be using 7 of the 16 available connections. Anyway, as a result of this big mess, the students have been informed that they cannot bring the following to the lab: memory sticks, CDs, DVDs, headphones, etc. In fact, they have to leave their backpacks outside of the lab. They only can bring their notebooks and a pen. To be honest, I’m not sure how the virus got into our lab. I don’t know if it was one of the students or my counterpart. He hasn’t been very cautious of what he puts into the teacher’s computer and the problem started right after he put the burned DVD into the teacher’s computer and the one computer that was reacting the same way when the virus struck. Some of the files that were suspicious showed up under “[his name] Documents”.