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Text File | 1994-02-09 | 26KB | 482 lines

╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ Welcome to QUESTION.TXT! Hopefully you'll find the answer to your question ║ ║ in this collection. ║ ║ ║ ║ o If you have a general question about data integrity, security, viruses, ║ ║ system sectors or similar things, the help index in Integrity Master may ║ ║ provide the answer (Hit F1 and then "I"). If that fails, read the manual ║ ║ (file I-M.DOC), especially part two on "Data Integrity and Viruses". ║ ║ ║ ║ o If you're having trouble using the menus in Integrity Master try the ║ ║ tutorial offered in SetupIM. ║ ║ ║ ║ o If all else fails, please contact us or the Advanced Support Group for ║ ║ assistance. See details in file SUPPORT.DOC (IMVIEW SUPPORT.DOC ║ ║ to read this file). ║ ║ ║ ╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Q: I start SetupIM and suddenly nothing happens or I see the display scroll and then get disorganized. The program seems to be stuck. A: Insert formatted media (e.g., diskettes) in all removable drives, run SetupIM, and try waiting about 10 seconds and hitting the ENTER key several times. You may be using a program which is trying to write a message to the screen while SetupIM is checking out your disk drives. You can safely ignore any garbage which appears on your screen. SetupIM will write a full report to file IMPROC.TXT. Be sure to check this file. The most common cause for this type of problem is using DRIVER.SYS to assign a duplicate drive letter to a floppy drive: You may have a statement like this in the \CONFIG.SYS file: DEVICE=DRIVER.SYS /D:0 /F:0 The numbers could be 0 as above or have some other value. DRIVER.SYS may try to write a message to the screen to ask you to insert a new disk and hit a key when SetupIM checks this drive. Deleting this line should solve the problem. Once you finish running SetupIM you may restore the line. IM will have know enough not to access the duplicate logical drive. Q: How do I scan multiple disks for viruses? A: Please hit F1 in IM and select "Scanning for viruses" from the help index or read the section on scanning in the user guide (I-M.DOC file). From the command line you can use the /VM parameter to quickly scan multiple disks. Use /Dx to tell IM which drive to scan. IM will return a DOS error level of 64 or greater if it encounters a virus. Q: I want to do nothing other than scan a disk for known viruses how do I use Integrity Master to accomplish that? A: If this is a disk that you've already "INITIALIZED" with Integrity Master then just use the CHECK menu to check that disk. If this a new disk to Integrity Master then use the INITIALIZE menu, to do an initialize of all the files. You can save time in both cases by using the option menu to limit initializing or checking to executable programs. You can also use the "V" option on the check menu to ONLY check for known viruses, but if you do this you lose all the additional benefits of integrity checking. Q: I'd like to setup a batch file that sometimes does a quick check and sometimes does normal, full integrity checking. Since there's no command line option to change the type of checking, how do I do this? A: Set your options for quick checking by using the OPTIONS menu. Then select the first option on that menu to save (Write) the parameter file. This saves your options in file IM.PRM. You can now copy that file to a different file let's say QC.PRM ("COPY IM.PRM QC.PRM"). Now execute IM and set your options back for full checking. Save (Write) those options. You now have two files: QC.PRM (for quick checking) and IM.PRM (for normal checking). IM with no change will use the options in IM.PRM. Anytime, you want to do a quick check just invoke IM with: "IM QC.PRM" and you'll be using the quick check options. If QC.PRM is not in the current directory, be sure to code the complete path on the control card (e.g., "IM D:\utils\QC.PRM"). Q: Sometimes IM comes up with different colors on the screen than before. What's going on? A: IM checks the DOS video mode indictor on your PC to see if you are in color or monochrome mode, as well as directly checking your video adapter. This allows you to use the DOS "MODE BW80" to indicate that a two-color display is present on a color adapter card. Some programs change this value to an incorrect value. If this happens to you, use the DOS mode command to set the video mode back to the correct state. For example, enter "MODE CO80" to restore normal color mode. You can also use the command line override (or SetupIM) so IM comes up using whatever colors you prefer. "IM /C" would force IM to use color mode. Q: I just tried to do a check or initialize on my hard disk. Integrity Master replied that this disk was not working. It IS working! What's wrong? ~~ A: File "DISKhelp.TXT" describes how to correct this problem. Read file DISKhelp.TXT using your favorite program, copy it to your printer ("COPY DISKHELP.TXT PRN") or enter the command: IMVIEW DISKHELP.TXT to display this file. Q: I just entered the command IMVIEW (or IMPRINT) and nothing happened. My PC just said "Bad command or file name". A: IMVIEW.COM and IMPRINT.BAT must be either in the current directory or in one of the directories in your DOS path. To put these in the path, enter the command PATH at the DOS prompt and you'll see a list of directories on your disk. You can copy IMVIEW.COM or IMPRINT.BAT into any of these directories. Q: I don't have my original DOS install diskettes to do a clean boot from. How do I install Integrity Master? A: It's only important to have a certified clean copy if a virus may already in control of your PC. In most cases you can safely install using your DOS files in place on your hard disk. Q: I use DOS 4.0. I get a message saying that SHARE needs to be loaded for large media, when I boot from diskette. Do I need to copy SHARE.EXE to my Integrity Master boot floppy? A: Integrity Master does not need SHARE. You may wish to copy it so other programs can use it. If so, just copy it to your diskette. DOS will automatically load it when you boot. Q: I just checked several disks but I can't find the report file. What happened? A: If you have the report file option turned on in automatic mode (check the OPTION menu), then the report file is written to the first disk that you check. If you later switch to check another disk, without turning off the report file, the reports will still go to the same file on the same disk. You can choose to have this file always written to the same disk by selecting this on the OPTION menu. If you specified a report file name "of your choice", and did not include a drive or directory specification as part of the file name, then it will be written to the current disk and directory when you start checking or initializing. Q: Other anti-virus products don't say I have to boot my PC before checking my files; why do I have to boot before checking with Integrity Master? A: Actually, if you thoroughly read your documentation you'll probably see that your product DOES suggest you boot from a diskette; we're just a bit more up front about this issue. If you're satisfied with the level of protection obtained from other products without booting, then you don't need to boot. IT IS OUR GOAL TO PROTECT AGAINST ALL VIRUSES NOT JUST KNOWN VIRUSES. The reason we ask you to boot from a write protected floppy before checking, is that this is the ONLY way to be sure that a virus is not already resident and in control of your PC. Integrity Master checks memory for resident viruses, so it is somewhat safe NOT to boot. If you choose to do this, be sure you always have the latest version of Integrity Master. Q: I want to write my reports to my printer. IM reports that my printer isn't working, but it is! What can I do? A: You have a printer which is not compatible with the standard IBM BIOS functions that IM uses. There's an easy way around this. Just use the OPTION menu to write the reports to a file called "PRN". This will allow DOS to route the print for you. Q: IM just detected a change to a program. Only this one program changed, I don't think it's a virus. What are some programs known to change themselves? A: There are too many programs to list them all here. Many programs will be changed when you run the install or option update program for that program. WordStar is a well known example. A new program is SETVER.EXE which is part of DOS 5. Whenever you run SETVER to set the DOS version for a program, SETVER stores this information by modifying its own code. This will result in IM reporting a change to SETVER.EXE every time you run the program. Changing certain options in MicroSoft Windows (R) will also change the program itself (WIN.COM). Q: IM keeps reporting that my boot sector has changed. It is NOT reporting a known virus. The boot sector seems to change every day. I don't think I've got a virus. What's going on? A: If your boot sector keeps changing repeatedly and you have an older HP or Zenith PC, you may have one of the models that changes its boot sector every time you boot. If you use a program like STACKER which establishes a virtual (not a real) disk, do not be concerned if the boot sector on the virtual (e.g., Stacker) disk keeps changing. This is normal behavior. As a matter of fact, changes to the boot sector of any disk which can not be booted from, generally do not represent a problem. If you have any doubt about whether it's a virus, save a few of your BOOT.SRL files (Run an Initialize boot sector after IM reports a change) and send these along with the other information called for in file SUPPORT.DOC to us. We'll check to see if a virus might be present in your boot sector. Q: IM detected a virus on my PC. I reloaded my system sectors and either deleted or reloaded all infected files, yet the virus keeps coming back! What should I do? A: Somewhere a virus is eluding your checks; please check the following: o Did you install IM after booting from a clean floppy? It's absolutely vital to do a cold boot before checking. o Are you using a task switcher (or multi-tasker) such as windows? If so, then this program may be saving some of your infected programs in its "swap" file. This file often ends in the letters ".SWP". Delete this file if it exists. o Be sure you check ALL files and floppies which come into contact with your computer. You may have missed a file or diskette somewhere. Please take the extra time and check them all. o It's possible that viral code is hidden somewhere other than an executable file. IM normally checks only executable files (programs and overlays) for known viruses. Try selecting "Disk for known Viruses" on the CHECK menu and selecting "Check All files" on that menu. This will check all files as well as system sectors on your disk. Check any other disks that you've been using. Q: I use an executable compression program (e.g., LXEXE or PKlite), am I in danger of the compressed files being infected? A: If a virus should infect ANY of your files, compressed or not, IM can detect this fact. So if a virus should infect a compressed executable file, IM will have no trouble detecting this. On the other hand if a known virus infects a program and then that program is compressed, IM may or may not recognize the virus in the compressed file. However if the virus should attempt to spread, IM will detect this. Q: IM just detected a virus in one of my system sectors, and says to reload the system sector. I've never run an "Initialize", so I don't have the sector reload file (.SRL). Help! What do I do? A: This reinforces an important point: DO AN INITIALIZE ON ALL YOUR DISKS SO THAT YOU CAN EASILY RECOVER ANY DAMAGE TO A SYSTEM SECTOR. Don't wait; DO IT NOW! If you lost your boot sector, you're in luck, otherwise you have some serious work ahead of you. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING, POWER OFF AND BOOT FROM A WRITE PROTECTED DISKETTE CONTAINING A CLEAN COPY OF DOS THEN: o You can manually reload the DOS boot sector by entering the command: "SYS C:" where "C" is the drive with the damaged boot sector. You must logged on to drive A: when you enter this command. o Manually reloading partition sectors is MUCH more difficult. Before you go any further, make sure you have as much of your data backed up as possible. There is a serious risk that what you are about to do may render your disk unreadable! Try one of the following options: 1) If you have DOS 5, try the command: "FDISK /MBR" to create a new partition sector (AKA Master Boot Record). Be careful; this is NOT documented and may not always work. 2) If you can locate an identically formatted hard disk you could use IM (INITIALIZE partition sector) to capture the sector reload file and then reload it on your damaged disk (use Reload "Missing Partition") to accomplish this. 3) Some of the utility programs such as Norton or MACE may be able to repair this sector. If they don't replace the sector, you could use one of the sector editors to write zeros over the first part of the boot sector and then turn the "disk fix-it" program loose again. Our testing shows that these programs don't always succeed and may further damage your disk. 4) The last alternative is to do a low level format. This completely removes all data from your hard disk. See the next question for details on how to do this. Q: How do I do a low-level format? A: This procedure varies with the type of computer your have and the type of disk controller board. If you have an IBM PC then you have (or can get) a diskette containing a program to low level format your drive. Some other manufacturers provide this also. Running SPINRITE to do a low-level format is NOT what we want to do here. We MUST do a DESTRUCTIVE format. Check the documentation that came with your disk controller board for the technique to low-level format or call the manufacturer for information on how to do this. Be sure to explain that all you really want to do is to replace the partition sector (master boot record). They may have a utility to do just that. The procedure for some common Western Digit controllers is as follows: Enter "DEBUG" (from your DOS boot diskette) at the DEBUG prompt ("-") enter: "g=C800:5" (press ENTER) at this point you should be able to follow the directions. You will need to know whether you are formatting your first on second hard disk and the layout (heads and cylinders plus and bad tracks) but often you can just hit ENTER and accept the defaults. To find the bad track list open your PC and look on the drive itself. Q: I was just checking a diskette for viruses and IM detected the DataCrime 2 virus in a file. When I restarted IM it detected the DataCrime virus resident in memory! I never executed the program which was infected, so how did the virus get control of my PC? A: The virus wasn't really resident or in control of your PC. What happened was that a piece of the viral code was left somewhere in memory - probably in one of DOS's file buffers. Although IM takes great pains to clear its own buffers and areas of memory, it's not unusual to get a false indication of the virus being active in memory after detecting a virus in a file or system sector. Q: When I first start IM, I see something red flash on my screen, but I can't make out what it says. A: When IM first starts, it looks for the parameter file (IM.PRM) which contains all your option settings. On some PCs this can be a slow process, so IM announces that it is: "Searching for and reading parameter file." On faster PCs, this message appears as barely a blur! Q: IM reports invalid time and date stamps on many of my files. Do I have a virus? A: Maybe! If it's only executable files with the illegal values, you'll need to check further to make sure there's no unknown virus on the loose. If you have such a virus, IM should be detecting unexplained changes to executable programs. Try following the procedures outlined in the manual (or the I-M.DOC file) for determining if file changes are due to viruses. (Basically, what you do is to run a full check, execute a suspect program, cold boot, and run another full check.) There are some common causes for files to have illegal time and date stamps (such as 62 seconds): 1) There is reportedly a backup program ("Intelligent Backup") which marks files by setting the seconds field to an illegal value. 2) Some anti-virus products attempt to "immunize" your files by setting the seconds of time stamp of your programs to 62. This works only against a handful of viruses but some programs do this anyway. 3) Central Point's (PC Tools) Datamon will reportedly mark encrypted files by setting the seconds field to 62. Q: IM says I have a virus resident in memory, but I doubt this, since I have another anti-virus product which reports nothing. What's going on? A: Some anti-virus products execute as a resident program (TSR) to monitor your system and check for signs of known viruses. To check for these viruses, they use fragments of the same viruses that IM checks for. It's a standard practice to keep these fragments encrypted or stored in pieces, but some products don't follow this practice. You probably have such a product. To double check, remove any line in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file which executes this product. Cold boot your PC. Now run IM. If the other product was at fault, IM will now detect no virus. Q: When I run IM under Microsoft Windows, it reports "General failure" reading some files. This is supposed to be a hardware error. What's happening? A: Microsoft Windows has certain files open. When IM tries to read these files it is unable to. The message returned to IM varies from one PC to another. On some PCs, you may see merely that certain files can not be opened. On other PCs (such as yours), a critical error is returned to IM. IM is simply reporting the error returned to its critical error handler. We are looking into ways to determine the true rather than the simply the reported cause of errors such as this. Q: I'm using STACKER on my PC and IM keeps reporting boot sector corruption on my stacker volume. What gives? A: STACKER closely simulates an actual DOS disk drive on its volume. It pretends to have an actual boot sector. This boot sector is not a real boot sector and may change from moment to moment. Viruses can not spread by infecting this boot sector and since it can change at any time, checking this boot sector is a waste of time. When you check a STACKER volume, just check the files and not the system sectors. Don't do a "Check Entire disk integrity" which includes the system sectors on the STACKER volumes. If you use the command line, use "/CD" rather than "/CE". Automatic handling of STACKER volumes will be available soon. Q: IM reports corruption of its own report file. Why? A: This can happen in only one circumstance. If you select a report file with a name of your own choice and then check the disk and directory containing that report file, IM will write to that file between the time that it checks it and the time that the file is closed. We recommend using auto-named report files or placing them on a disk different from the disk being checked to avoid this message. Q: I am getting errors when reading a disk I think is working OK. Why does IM report an error. A: See file DISKhelp.TXT Q: How do I get rid of that wait for keypress at the end of processing. A: If you enter a command line parameter such as "/CR" or "/CD", and specify no pause either by using the option menu or with the "/N" or "/NE" parameter, IM will pause only briefly after it finishes checking. Q: How can I quickly remove boot sector viruses (such as Stoned or Michelangelo) from numerous diskettes? A: If your diskettes are bootable, the DOS "SYS" command can be used to quickly remove boot sector viruses. (You can always try the SYS command it won't hurt anything) Be sure to boot from a write protected copy of DOS and then issue the "SYS x:" command (x is the disk you wish to clean). For non-bootable disks, locate an uninfected disk of the same type as that which is infected. Use IM to initialize the boot sector data for that diskette. Temporarily remove all other "BOOT.SRL" files from your disks. Make sure the "BOOT.SRL" (boot sector reload file) which IM just created is present either in your current directory or in the root directory of one of your disks. Now: o Run IM and turn the report file off. o Change to the drive containing an infected floppy (Commands menu). o Tell IM to reload the boot sector. o Insert and another diskette and keep reloading. IM will locate the BOOT.SRL file on one of your other disks and reload the sectors on each floppy diskette. Q: How can I avoid having separate report files on each disk IM checks? A: Use the Options menu to set the auto-named report file to go to a specific disk of your choosing. All reports will then go to this disk, independent of the disk being checked. Q: I see: "Changes in directory xxxxxx:" but no changes appear on my screen. Why is this? A: If you have asked IM to exclude files or directories from checking, IM will remove their associated integrity data the next time you run a check. If you have asked IM not to tell you about excluded files or directories, it will still alert you that it is updating the integrity data for directories where something is being excluded. This notice appears only once when IM first removes the preexisting integrity data for the excluded files and directories. Q: Integrity Master reported a file as having a problem or being suspicious yet I didn't see why. Where's the explanation? A: You probably have your halt options set to halt only on serious problems or emergencies. In this situation the detail information is written only to your report file. Please read the report for the detail information on what was found wrong with the file. Q: I tried the "/L" option on my laptop but the screen is not very legible. A: The "/L" (LCD) option is intended for older CGA compatible laptops such as the Toshiba 1000. Newer laptops (especially VGA gray scale displays) should work fine with no special video override. If the display doesn't look right on a newer laptop try the "/M" rather than the "/L" command line switch. Q: I just did a "DIR" on a diskette which had the "Stoned" boot sector virus. When I ran IM, it reported the virus was active in memory. Can I get a virus by just doing a DIR? A: No; you cannot get infected unless you execute an infected program or boot from an infected diskette. When you did the "DIR", a copy of the infected boot sector was read into memory. IM then detected this image of the virus in memory. Although the virus is in memory, this is harmless since the virus code is never executed. Q: When I run Integrity Master on an empty directory, it lists a large number of files as deleted (or sometimes added). These files don't exist there. A: You are using the DOS "APPEND" command. This makes files appear to present in any directory which are actually in the appended directory. Type "APPEND" and hit ENTER to see if you are using it. When you installed DOS this command may have been placed in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. You almost certainly don't need it. If you don't want to get rid of it, just enter the command "APPEND ;" before you execute IM or include this in a .BAT file to execute IM. Q: I don't like the way IM displays dates or times. A: Execute SetupIM and select "Change Format for date or time" from the "Advanced option" menu.