Computer Virus Infects PCs at Santa Fe College
April 21, 2010
No impact on classes; Santa Fe College remains open
Santa Fe College’s IT department required all campus PCs to shut down today to stop the spread of a computer virus that affected at least 1,300 computers.
“To the best of our knowledge, our email system, Web server and registration system were not impacted,” said Ed Bonahue, interim provost. “It has only affected desktop machines running XP. So although it’s a considerable administrative impact, and it’s impacting our classrooms such as not being able to show PowerPoints, overall, registration, grades, and processing of end-of-the-semester materials should all be fine. Our IT guys think they have the right fix, and they’re testing it now.”
The college's anti-virus software is provided by an outside company. Each day, the college brings down its data file and then re-loads it back into the computers.
“Last night, the company sent the wrong file, which allowed a virus to come through,” explained Tim Nesler, associate vice president for information technology service. “It at least 1,300 computers. We now know how to fix it, and that’s good, but we are going to have to visit every single computer to install software, which is going to take several days.”
Computers in the Administration Building and R Building, which houses the Office of Admissions, will be the first to be reloaded.
“This was a virus that went after the operating systems,” Nesler said. “It gets rid of your icons and then keeps trying to restart the machine. It changes some settings, but it has not affected data.”
Spring classes end April 23 and final exams are scheduled for April 26-30. Santa Fe College's spring enrollment is 16,400 students and the college has 1,204 faculty and staff.
