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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf
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PROGRAMS
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About_Virus_Progs
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1988-05-28
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ABOUT NOVIRUS, VACCINE AND ANTIBIOTIC NEWS IN GENERAL
[Ed: The NOVIRUS Program in this drawer is super-fast and
efficient and flexible - you can check your entire disk
collection at a cost to you of about 3 seconds per disk, ie the
time it takes you to pull out and put in disks! Please use it for
everyone's sake, especially yours!]
NOVIRUS - YES ANOTHER VIRUS CHECKER...but this one can be a "one shot" or
recursive. So it can be used in the STARTUP-SEQUENCE or used to
CHECK MULTIPLE DISKS. It will identify by name many bootblocks,
it will destroy SCA, BYTE BANDIT and DASA viruses. It will ask
you if you want to remove any particular known or suspected
virus, and will give you a second prompt to make sure. If the
disk is write protected it will prompt you to flip the write
protect. If the bootblock is unknown it display the bootblock as
ASCII (ie, text) and give you the option of leaving it alone or
destroying it. The program turns off disk ID so non standard
disk can be checked without DOS giving multiple requesters.
The beauty of it is that for checking multiple disks
it is very fast as it needs no key presses or mouse buttons, it
checks disks as fast as you can push them in the drive.
[Ed: Works like a dream, and simple to operate too, either from
the Workbench or from the CLI. From Workbench simply
double-click the icon, and follow instructions. If you want to
use the CLI, do the following - open the GOTOCLI icon in this
drawer to go straight to a CLI and simply enter:
> novirus - to get a description of the program
> novirus df1: - to check the disk in df1: for any viruses
> novirus df1: r - to check a bunch of disks one after the
other in the external drive. Of course you
can specify any drive you like.
You can also put NOVIRUS in your startup-sequences to check your
disks automatically. Simply enter the line:
novirus df0:
having made sure that NOVIRUS is in your C directory (or on the
PATHS you've specified).
Note that if a virus is found on some disk by the program, you
can continue checking disks without any problem. If you have the
slightest suspicion that you may have the virus in memory (by
having booted from a suspect disk in that session), then COLD
BOOT (turn your machine off and start up all over again), having
removed the offending with NOVIRUS.
This works with all versions of Kickstart 1.2 and will be
updated regularly through Nic and through Megadisc when/if (!)
new viruses appear.
USING VACCINE3
Like the NOVIRUS program, this is simplicity itself. Simply double-click
on the icon, and a screen will come up telling you about the program, and
telling you if any nasties have been detected in memory. Then a smaller
window will appear instructing you to insert a disk into DF0: . Having
checked that, it will continue checking disks if you like, or you can
exit.
VIRUS UPDATE
* The Anti-virus utilities in this drawer will do everything
necessary to safeguard your disks. Check out the docs that go with them,
and use them.
* On BIX (Byte Magazine's large BBS with large Amiga sections
frequented by all the Amiga gurus), there was a recent message about a new
virus from Sweden called the "Revenge" virus. Not only is it reported to
be difficult to erase, but apparently turns your "zzz" pointer into a
normally hidden part of the male anatomy. What a sense of humour...
* Discovery Software (who've just stopped producing MARAUDER, and
are into Games now, which can't be copied with Marauder...) are said to
have put out a disk/program which is a Virus Database/checker/eliminator,
which sounds like the ultimate utility for looking after your disks. More
info as it comes to hand.
Unfortunately, there are still some of the living dead out there
coming up with unpleasant little viruses. There is no evidence yet of
anything more than "boot-block" viruses, such as the SCA and Byte
Bandit viruses, which reside in the first 2 blocks of a bootable disk
and load themselves into memory ready to leap onto the boot blocks of
other disks booted in that session. If odd things are happening to your
computer, screen blanks, strange messages, etc, then you may have a
virus on your disks, and you should be aware of the problem and have an
antidote.
A recent commercial anti-virus program has come via TRANSACTOR
magazine in the US which goes a bit further, and it is available on our
VIRUS-ELIMINATOR Theme disk, along with the 2 Virus-Killers on this
disk, or get it on FISH 154.
As the writer of Guardian says:
" Guardian does not steal even a single cycle of the machine's
time, because it's called only during boot.
While the other antivirus programs are tuned to a particular version or
family of viruses, Guardian recognizes any non-standard bootblock. By
'standard bootblock' I mean a bootblock created by the Workbench INSTALL
command. This standard bootblock is contained in the Guardian code.
Guardian installs itself in place of the bootstrap module, and examines
the contents of each bootblock by comparing it with the standard one,
BEFORE it is actually executed."
* Nic Wilson tells me that GUARDIAN could have a problem when it
comes to handling the SCA virus, as it seems to get confused and write
the SCA back to the disk. He also mentions that as it stays in memory,
it has a tendency to upset the running of a number of other programs.
If you're using GUARDIAN, check it out.
A worthy program for viewing the actual contents of the boot blocks of
any disks is called VIEWBOOT and provides an easy interface for
checking out suspect boot blocks. NOVIRUS however, will show the
contents of any suspicious bootblocks before asking you whether you want
to remove them.
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