Over the past few days we have had some e-mail issues where individuals here were unable to receive messages sent to them by some off-campus e-mail addresses. We have been working with our Internet service providers since Tuesday to try to solve the problem and thankfully the problem is now resolved. There was an issue with one of Morenet’s routers that was preventing us from getting e-mail from these specific sites.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. You should now be receiving these missing e-mails from the last few days. Be sure to notice once the message is open, that the sent date and time is actually for when the message was originally sent.

If by tomorrow you are missing any e-mails that you were expecting to receive, please contact the sender and ask them to resend the message.

Towards the end of last week we pushed out a Microsoft security update, KB979352, for Internet Explorer that corrected a major vulnerability in Windows/IE. This patch corrected a problem in Windows that allow malicious sites to execute remote code or crash Internet Explorer. This vulnerability made news in the last couple weeks as being part of the attack that was launched against Google by China.

As you may have experienced, since then we’ve started getting reports from users not being allowed to use Adobe Reader to load PDF documents. We’ve seen and tested this issue with various configurations including Windows XP, Windows 7, Adobe Reader 8, Adobe Reader 9, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. This error happens to any of these types of systems, only after the patch is installed.

We do not believe that this issue is caused by the recent upgrade to Adobe Reader 9 that was also pushed to campus systems last week, as the issue seems to be present in Adobe Reader 8 (the previously installed version) as well. It is just an unfortunate coincidence.

Rockhurst University will have a late start of 10:30am on Thursday morning due to inclement weather, as a result the Help Desk will not be open until that time. If weather conditions deteriorate more than forecast, then Rockhurst may ultimately close for business on Thursday, and we would announce such closing as we normally do via the local television stations, the main website, by calling the main number at 816-501-4000, by calling Security dispatch at 816-501-4010 and/or receiving a Textcaster message.

The Help Desk will also close at 3:00pm on January 6.

The Office of Public Relations & Marketing encourages the university community to include the new Centennial logo in your outgoing email signatures from Microsoft Outlook 2007. It is currently not possible to include images from signatures in Microsoft Outlook Web Access.

Monday, December 14 through Tuesday, December 15
8:00 am to 7:00 pm

Wednesday, December 16 through Friday, December 18
8:00 am to 4:30 pm

Saturday, December 19
Closed

Monday, December 20 through Wednesday, December 23
8:00 am to 4:30 pm

Thursday, December 24 through Sunday, January 3
University Closed
To report a network emergency, please contact Campus Security at 816-501-4010

Monday, January 4 through Friday, January 8
8:00 am to 4:30 pm

Saturday, January 9
Closed

Beginning Monday, January 12
Resume regular hours

As we approach finals week, things all around campus can get very stressful for everyone. Here are some helpful computing tips to make sure everything goes smoothly on the last week of the semester.

Save early, and save often
When you're in Microsoft Word, make sure you're saving your file at least every 10 minutes. Don't rely on the auto-recovery function to save for you. If your computer crashes, you may not get that file back. And never wait until you're done with the entire paper to make the first save, as soon as you open Word and start typing, save that file!

With the recommendation from Student Senate, we wanted to share some great offers that Rockhurst Students may want to take advantage of very soon before they expire.

1. Microsoft Windows 7 is available for only $29.99 by going to this website: http://www.win741.com and clicking on “Buy”, then “Buy Now”. You will need to input your student e-mail address and you will receive a confirmation e-mail allowing you to order the software for this price. If you upgrade to Windows 7 we recommend you remove McAfee Antivirus first, and be sure to backup your data.

   Windows 7 is already supported on Cisco Clean Access so you will still be able to get on our network, but you will need to install Microsoft Security Essentials (which is free) instead of McAfee. For more information on our anti-virus change please visit our website: http://help.rockhurst.edu/msav.

2. Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 is available for only $59.95 by going to this website: http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx. Again, click on “Buy Now” and input your student e-mail address and you will receive a confirmation e-mail allowing you to order the software for this price. Office Ultimate 2007 includes Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Access 2007, Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007, Groove 2007, Publisher 2007, and InfoPath 2007.  
3. Microsoft is giving 1 Asus Netbook away each day for 50 days. The offer runs from October 26th – December 14th, 2009. To enter visit the following website: http://my.liveatedu.com/contest and click the “Enter Sweepstakes Now!” button and fill out the appropriate information including your student e-mail account.
4. Get access now to 25GB of free storage you can access anywhere. As part of your Exchange Labs e-mail account which has 10GB of storage space for e-mail, you also have what is called a SkyDrive. Your SkyDrive is basically 25GB of storage space on Microsoft’s servers for any files you want to save and have access to from any Internet connection. Think of it as a 25GB flash drive on the web.

   To access your SkyDrive, log into your Rockhurst e-mail account and click on the SkyDrive link at the top of the page, then click sign in. For more information about using SkyDrive visit the following website: http://www.windowslive.com/Online/SkyDrive

Thank you and we hope you enjoy these great offers!

Rockhurst University is committed to providing secure access to its network resources. For some time we've been using McAfee Enterprise Anti-Virus to accomplish this. However, as the landscape of virus and malware threats has changed dramatically, it has become necessary for our security measures to change and adapt. 

Computer Services is pleased to announce that beginning this winter, we will begin migrating campus systems from McAfee Enterprise Anti-Virus over to Microsoft Forefront Client Security. In addition, we will begin the process of moving our student and employee home-use options away from McAfee and over to Microsoft Security Essentials, which is a free consumer based version of the Microsoft Forefront engine.

This will have an effect on our users in a few ways.

We apologize for the issues anyone may have had logging into thin clients on campus the morning of Monday, September 28. The issues were related to minor backend issues and have been resolved. If you have further problems accessing campus thin clients please contact our office. 

Update, 1:34PM: We are looking at additional issues and hope to have them corrected soon.

We are aware of issues related to WebCT8 (https://webct8.rockhurst.edu) and SSL, and are currently working to correct them. If you receive security related errors when logging into WebCT8 please ignore them for the time being. We hope to have this problem resolved very soon.

These errors have no affect on on other WebCT server.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

(Update: This problem should now be corrected.)