Geo GeoBook 1E Education Laptops - HORRIBLE!

[bwilliams_hc]

We had 25 GEO books delivered preloaded with WIN 10 Education and must admit, they've been fine.

[kennysarmy]

Returned one of these as it was faulty (dead) filled in the online form to RMA and specifically asked for a "standard" one and they've sent through another "managed" one

[Dos_Box]

We have currently unapproved the posts replying to the journalist until we know more. I have just PM'd him, and once we know more shall make a decison on what to do then. Please note that this is primarily to prevent you from getting in bother for any comments you might make, however unintentional

[Boredguy]

to be honest, we've had 1 faulty one (that we're aware off) out of nearly 200, and it just won't charge back up, and when we get time to do a RMA for it we will.
Yes they are well below the spec we would look for if purchasing ourselves, but they are handling up perfectly fine for us joined to the domain, with Always On VPN and Office 365 etc all configured on it.

[Andrew_C]

Not sure if this is the best place for this...

According to HIGNFY "following the success of the school meals replacement, a new laptop scheme is launching" IMG_20210113_133406.jpg

[sister_annex]

Hello all, I know bad news isn't what we need right now but we've just fired up a bunch of these to prep and number of them have alerted via the built in AV that a WORM has been found. These are the non DFE spec laptops

The virus in question is labelled as Worm:Win32/Gamarue.l

IMG_5527.jpg

For those not wiping and rebuilding these it may be worth rechecking these before giving out.

And just for clarification, this has shown up on devices that have not been connected to our network in any form, have had no internet access and the only process that has gone on is running through the OOBE. No USB devices plugged in either.

[Steve21]

We haven't had any alerts on any of the geobooks and have been using the built-in image for months (multiple batches as well), unless it's a new batch/image they're using maybe. As that virus normally targets browsers that aren't installed on any of the geobooks we've had

Out of curiosity what's inside that bat file? Take it not just a random mis-flag for some reason

Steve

[sister_annex]

Out of curiosity what's inside that bat file? Take it not just a random mis-flag for some reason
Steve

TO be honest we've not looked, mainly due to the AV removing it before we could start. On multiple devices it's a different random filename ending either .bat .com or .exe all found under the same category.

This is a relatively new batch (we had 128 delivered last week)

[Steve21]

TO be honest we've not looked, mainly due to the AV removing it before we could start. On multiple devices it's a different random filename ending either .bat .com or .exe all found under the same category.

This is a relatively new batch (we had 128 delivered last week)

Ah fair enough, Guessing yeah must be a new batch then. Will have to remember to keep an eye on that!

Thanks,
Steve

[DrCheese]

https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus...ns-dfe-laptops

If I had to bet, this will be the Geobooks, likely the DFE secure ones as they'd have slapped on their own image/enrolled them & assumed that Windows Update would pick up the slack with the audio drivers...

[StevenH]

Thanks for the Drivers Norphy.

[ITGURU]

Interesting one this morning when setting up the Geobooks, we've had 1 come up with a virus alert after going through the first run wizard and getting to the desktop before doing anything else with it

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[sister_annex]

Yup, that's exactly what we had: Geo GeoBook 1E Education Laptops - HORRIBLE!

Update: Thankfully it seems that only 10 out of the 160 we have seem to be infected but it now seems that it is a build thing

[danselvey]

Not a of a fan of these GeoBooks myself.

Maybe a bit of an insane idea - remote thin clients. I thought about booting straight to an RDP Session, perhaps with a little wifi chooser menu on boot, VPN Tunnel back to the network (if its not on site). Obviously students having poor internet could be an issue, but RDP is fairly efficient, so it would have to be a fairly unusable connection anyway. I've even seen tools to get the laptop battery status to appear in the RDP session.

It would be a low maintenance setup and could even run it on top of Linux/FreeRDP, for a really light base system with no local licensing required.

Thoughts welcome!

[MrEprise]

An annoying thing I've just found - the SD card slots don't line up with the cases properly, so it is possible and very easy to lose a SD card inside the case.