Re: mcafee self destructed

A few quick notes on this off-topic subject.

1. Norton has a DOS component, meaning that if you start your computer
in DOS mode, change to the Norton AV directory and run NAV, you should
be able to repair things in those situations where Windows won't reliably
start.

-- Edited excerpt here from Norton Webpage

Type dir /s /b \navdx.exe and then press Enter. This displays the path
to the Norton AntiVirus DOS scanner. If NAV is installed to a different
drive, then change to the root of that drive first.

Change to the folder where Navdx.exe is installed.

Type navdx /a /doallfiles /prompt and press Enter

2. A virus CAN damage a harddrive, and other hardware as well. This is
not just writing Zeros or corrupting a FAT, but physical damage.

In the good old days, many a virus would reprogram the refresh rate of the
video card. In the monitors of the day without high-voltage overvoltage
shutoff circuitry, this would melt down the flyback.

There was one famous virus that would set the floppy to seeking in and out at
a particular rate, a rate designed to cause a resonance that if left long
enough would cause the heads to vibrate out of alignment.

And there were many viruses that would write a particular pattern to track
-1 using an undocumented but widely known procedure. The drives of the day
would use track -1 to recalibrate themselves; without the correct pattern,
they would not recal and would never go ready. A trip back to the
manufacturer was the only cure.

Today, it's harder to do this sort of damage to an IDE hard drive, but
certainly not impossible. All that is required is a knowledge of the
manufacturer specific commands. For example, a lowlevel format with a sector
size other than 512 bytes would render the drive essentially useless to
just about every x86 operating system.

3. I am the last line of support for IBMs on the SFU campus. Should a
staff or faculty member have a problem, they consult their departmental
computer person. Should the departmental person not be able to help them,
the problem gets escalated to the faculty person, who might escalate it to
the Help Center, who might escalate it to one of our department's consultants,
who might escalate it to me. Unfortunately, it stops with me.

Now, even with all this help looking after the routine problems, I still
see an average of 6 or 7 viruses a week, from a population of about 5,000
or so users. Two years ago, I saw maybe one a month.

Viruses are a real problem, and becoming more so every day. And
considering the state of the art in trojans and worms, viruses are really the
least of one's worries.

Alan

--

Alan Rothenbush | The Spartans do not ask the number of the
Academic Computing Services | enemy, only where they are.
Simon Fraser University |
Burnaby, B.C., Canada | Agix of Sparta