My doctor asked me to check his office computers and network because they've had a few "issues". ISSUES!! It's a damned mess. Looks like they got new computers in 2012, went from XP to Windows 7, and whoever did it for them, just copied a ton of old directories from the XP computers to the same paths on the Win7 computers. And there is reason to believe the same thing was done at least once before, from Windows ME/98 to XP!
There are multiple different directories being used essentially as the 'documents' folder, a couple are in the root not in the "users" or "public" areas. The folder names do not give good hints on what is in there. One of the main document folders is a sub-directory in {Users}\MUSIC, for whatever reason.
EVERYONE is running with administrator privileges, ALL the time. There are multiple 'retired' admin accounts, nobody seems to know for sure why they had to create a new administrator account, all they can tell me is "something was screwed-up so the guy just created a new account", and then, it appears, just did an account copy of everything, therefore preserving some of the dysfunction that existed with the old account.
I scanned all the machines with three different security apps (including one offline scanner) and cleaned a ton of adware, a couple malware, browser hijacks, and Trojans. Not running anything more than MSSE! Oh well, at least they have a decent dedicated firewall (SonicWALL).
There are a GOB of problems in Event Viewer like Volume Shadow Service cannot run because this user does not have proper permissions. IOW, System Restore is not functioning properly and cannot make shadow copies, system restore points.
I normally would just solve all this shit by backing up their stuff and reinstalling Windows, all their apps, and then put their data back. But they have medical billing, clinical practice, and other specialized apps that I know nothing about and am very hesitant to go messing around with. Two of them run in Windows XP Mode because they are older versions from like 2006/2007 that are supported only under Windows XP.
There is NO backup strategy!! Hell, not even System Restore is working on one of the computers (per above). If they have a hard drive die, they would need to send the drive to a data recovery firm!
There is NO spare computer. i.e. if one computer dies for any reason (motherboard, PSU, whatever), just move the good hard drive to an identical spare. NOPE!
And a couple more things but I think you get the idea.... D: :\
There are multiple different directories being used essentially as the 'documents' folder, a couple are in the root not in the "users" or "public" areas. The folder names do not give good hints on what is in there. One of the main document folders is a sub-directory in {Users}\MUSIC, for whatever reason.
EVERYONE is running with administrator privileges, ALL the time. There are multiple 'retired' admin accounts, nobody seems to know for sure why they had to create a new administrator account, all they can tell me is "something was screwed-up so the guy just created a new account", and then, it appears, just did an account copy of everything, therefore preserving some of the dysfunction that existed with the old account.
I scanned all the machines with three different security apps (including one offline scanner) and cleaned a ton of adware, a couple malware, browser hijacks, and Trojans. Not running anything more than MSSE! Oh well, at least they have a decent dedicated firewall (SonicWALL).
There are a GOB of problems in Event Viewer like Volume Shadow Service cannot run because this user does not have proper permissions. IOW, System Restore is not functioning properly and cannot make shadow copies, system restore points.
I normally would just solve all this shit by backing up their stuff and reinstalling Windows, all their apps, and then put their data back. But they have medical billing, clinical practice, and other specialized apps that I know nothing about and am very hesitant to go messing around with. Two of them run in Windows XP Mode because they are older versions from like 2006/2007 that are supported only under Windows XP.
There is NO backup strategy!! Hell, not even System Restore is working on one of the computers (per above). If they have a hard drive die, they would need to send the drive to a data recovery firm!
There is NO spare computer. i.e. if one computer dies for any reason (motherboard, PSU, whatever), just move the good hard drive to an identical spare. NOPE!
And a couple more things but I think you get the idea.... D: :\
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