Computers and the supernatural.

Hello all,

Note to Mods: I am placing this in the paranormal studies thread, but there may be a better location for this topic. If after you have read through my thoughts; you decide that it would be better placed elsewhere please do.

Now on to business. Some background: I am a systems admin for a medium sized corporation. I mainly handle hardware and networking support as day to day tasks, and some software and web issues as they arise. A few weeks ago was one of those times that all of these fields merged into one big mess. We have printers that operate via a print server located in one building that are connected to the operating server in another building via VPN. (I know lots of techie stuff, but it matters trust me) One day the printers in this building just stopped working. I rushed out and immediately began testing all the possible reasons for it to not work. After several days of the printers not working, and me testing every angle that I could think of I decided that if I had to rewire our entire system to fix it, that I would. That night I went home planning how it was going to be rerouted and reconfigured. The next morning I get to the location and the people on-site thank me for fixing their problem. I hadn't fixed their problem yet, in fact I hadn't really begun to work on fixing the problem to the fullest extent. I had them test and retest the setup and even called our server company to have them test it remotely. Everything was working perfectly. I called my supervisor who said he hadn't changed anything, I asked around to see if anyone else had changed anything, nothing was different. It hadn't even been working when everyone left.

Now it gets strange. A week or two later it happened again. Their system stopped printing and my first task was to rebuild the network. I started to plan how to make it work the night before, and got there the next morning and everything was fine.

You think that's strange?
One of our buildings in Shreveport has a computer that they use to update their server, and it got a virus. They asked me to look at it, but the day they asked I hadn't gotten a chance to look, but instead put it off til a week later. I forgot about it again, but that night remembered it and began making my plan of attack for a virus on such an important PC as I couldn't just reformat the whole system. The next time I went to Shreveport they thanked me for fixing the PC. Once again, I hadn't touched the PC yet. However, it was fixed, and running perfectly. They are able to run their updates without interruption. It would be one thing if this happened once, but three times? And who knows how many more will happen in the future.

I talked with my wife about it, as I know in the past I have been a sleep walker, and asked her if at any time I had gotten up in the middle of the night and used my PC, thinking maybe I had remote connected to these systems and fixed them from home in my sleep. She told me that I had been sleeping really well, and hadn't actually had an episode in a long time.

Now, I have always been sensitive to the paranormal around me and have had many encounters with the spirit world, but I don't think this has anything to do with that but maybe a form of Astral Projection?
So I ask you ATS, have any of you ever experienced something this odd? Or am I just really that lucky that all the systems are just working around me?

Kasei

TL;DR Computers fix themselves when I focus on them and go to sleep.

reply to post by Kasei


You should be happy , your getting help with your job

reply to post by imnothereru


Oh I am definitely enjoying the ease with which these things are getting done, but I would still like to have a reason behind it. Maybe if I can figure out how, I can start using it more often and make my life a lot easier.

Kasei

As a network/computer person for a living, it is highly possible that your print server had an issue.

I am not sure on what infrastructure you have setup - but if you are on a network with a print server, it is very possible the spooler service stopped working/got hung up.

Computers do weird things - with billions of code running through a processor at all times, it is highly possible some random fluke occured.

Things like this happen to me all the time as a computer admin - but I never chalk them up to supernatural or paranormal.

reply to post by MentorsRiddle


That was my initial thought however I logged into the servers and restarted the spooler personally. I know they were running properly through all of the testing that I did. I am sure there was some sort of fluke, but the likelihood of these things happening so close together under these circumstances, is slim to say the least. I didn't want to chalk it up to something supernatural such as AP or anything like that, until it happened at a different store.

Kasei

How quickly did this occur?

Right after the network was setup?

If so it could have taken a while for the DNS entries to replicate over the network - sometimes this takes a good while - good ole' windows.

It could also be a routing problem.

What did the error/event logs say?

reply to post by Kasei


Arrive @ work & make a lovely cup of coffee.

Phone calls begin to come in that accounts cannot print and some software is not working.

Enjoy coffee as the log of calls grows.

Coffee finished now so I swing into action.

Go into server room and unplug coffee machine.

Plug server back in.

Verify that it is back up and running.

Go back to desk and close call logs, confirming that all has been fixed (by yours truly).

What a technician I am. Almost a full days work and it's still only morning!

... but I could do with another coffee.

Click here for more information.

Originally posted by Kasei
reply to post by MentorsRiddle

 

That was my initial thought however I logged into the servers and restarted the spooler personally. I know they were running properly through all of the testing that I did. I am sure there was some sort of fluke, but the likelihood of these things happening so close together under these circumstances, is slim to say the least. I didn't want to chalk it up to something supernatural such as AP or anything like that, until it happened at a different store.

Kasei

Perhaps cleaners are plugging their vacuum cleaners into the power points used by these servers & PC's, then plugging the servers/PC's back in again when they have finished.

Originally posted by chr0naut
reply to post by Kasei

 

Arrive @ work & make a lovely cup of coffee.

Phone calls begin to come in that accounts cannot print and some software is not working.

Enjoy coffee as the log of calls grows.

Coffee finished now so I swing into action.

Go into server room and unplug coffee machine.

Plug server back in.

Verify that it is back up and running.

Go back to desk and close call logs, confirming that all has been fixed (by yours truly).

What a technician I am. Almost a full days work and it's still only morning!

... but I could do with another coffee.

HAHA This is priceless.

Sadly - its job security, hahaha.

reply to post by DangerMcBacon


No actually, I am extremely versed in networking with Windows, and *Nix. I have been doing this for a long time, and I never said that it was a ghost. My supervisor had no idea how to fix it, and everything that we tried didn't fix the problem. My response to my supervisor was not, "it must be a ghost", but rather I am going to rebuild the entire system to be 100% positive it is fixed right the first time. I inherited a mess of networking at all of our stores and have been rebuilding networks for a while making them right, instead of just working.
I simply feel that my experience here is strange because of the fact that a system that was running perfectly one day suddenly stopped working, and after trying every possible thing to fix it, aside from rebuilding the system, nothing worked but suddenly started working again. I know computers, especially Windows, have issues that cause them to stop working, but generally without some sort of user intervention, be-it restarting Windows or rebuilding a config file they don't just magically start working. Now please if you have nothing further to add to the conversation in the "paranormal studies" step off.

Kasei

reply to post by chr0naut


You know, if the server room wasn't locked up, I would assume this to be possible solution. But the server room is locked up and the only people to go in are myself and my supervisor.


Kasei

reply to post by Kasei


You give us a basic ho-hum story about a networking problem that everyone who has ever dealt with a system network has dealt with. I dare say almost everyone has had some computer glitch that has arisen and then inexplicably "fixed" itself. Yet you are of the level of mind that you think this warrants some kind of serious discussion about paranormal activity because you "thought" about fixing the problem at night before you went to work. Then you have the gaul to ask me to step off. Your thought process is a f-king joke, stick with office work and please don't delve into any scientific or philosophical endeavors.

As I said if I were your boss I would fire you in a minute, you don't seem to be very good at what you purport to do.

I realize that you want to limit the conversation to the paranormal, but I must say in all my years as a system admin very rarely has odd system behavior been attributed with the paranormal.

In all seriousness, as a fellow admin I will tell you that most likely you have virus issues (you admitted that in your OP). And to think that you ignored that threat for 1 week??!! I would not be surprised if your network has been totally pwned and rooted by now.

If I were you, I would compare file hashes (past versus current) to see what might have changed.

reply to post by DangerMcBacon


I worked in an office that I felt was haunted (cold spots, noises, doors opening and closing & etc).

I think that the ghost was a bit of a technophobe, though.

reply to post by Kasei


The mind IS a powerful thing. We have only touched the surface of what it is capable of doing.
Maybe you really did project yourself/thoughts to fixing this problem in your sleep (A.P), or maybe your spirit helpers were lending you a hand?

reply to post by JarsCloutLife


I haven't disappeared, had to drive to another market sorry.

Our server's are secure, the computer that had the virus is simply the one they download updates with and is not connected to the rest of the network. I was fairly sure the problem being fixed wasn't anything strange until my wife brought it up, which got me thinking. It most likely tbh was a networking issue arising at the ISP that they wouldn't own up to, but as far as our virus issue I can't explain why it disappeared unless someone took care of it and won't admit to it. I am not saying with certitude that anything supernatural or paranormal has happened, but wanted to merely discuss the possibilities of such a thing happening. I guess I assumed ATS was the best place, but I will keep these things to myself from now on.

Later
Kasei

reply to post by Kasei


Next time you want to post anything paranormal-related come to my thread. You won't be ridiculed there.
I have over 90 pages of people telling their paranormal experiences in a peaceful atmosphere.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think the OP has guts because techies and ghosts rarely go well together unless it has to do with actual physical electronic measuring devices like EVP, not only getting ridiculed for believing in the supernatural but also challenging some techies not to cringe by describing how he takes care of computer problems. While I myself believe there's more about computers and the astral it would be more like methods or interfaces to work with the spirit and soul in an understandable, safe and controlled manner rather than actual interaction between the spirit and physical.

But anyways I was just thinking about the possibility some virus got into the computer, which was then accessed remotely by some hacker, who deleted the virus (and maybe cracked the virusscanner) so not to arouse suspicion and installed some remote administration toolkit so it can use the computer for a bot network or just as a gateway to your companies network to capture data or to some other companies' network to make it less likely authorities track a hack attempt to it's origin. If I were you I'd either reinstall to save time or make it educational but costly and run several tests to determine whether or not the pc is still comprimised.

Maybe you should try implementing auditing and event collecting so you can more easily track down any unknown changes. There shouldn't be anything unpredictable or unexplainable in IT, meaning for every cause there is some reason for it to have happened which is either the systems admins fault, the users, hardware failure, the manufacturers, whoever decided to save money on procedures which did not appear to generate money instantly (like testing or properly configuring firewalls), some hacker, but never the gremlins.