Anti Virus Programs

Anti Virus Programs

Microsoft DOS FDISK /MBR command
Anti Virus Programs For DOS and Windows 3.x
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
McAfee Anti Virus

AGV Antivirus
Trend Micro's PC-Cillin

BOOT VIRUS

Some Worms and viruses infect the Master Boot Record of your hard drive. Because this is read in the first part of bootup, a virus can be loaded before any anti-virus program is there to protect you. This part of the hard drive is not accessible from the prompt making it a great place to hide a virus as well. The virus will use some memory, so some sophisticated Anti-Virus programs can detect it and so can you by reading the memory report. By typing CHKDSK at the prompt, you should see:
655360 Total Bytes Memory
If the amount is less than that, there is a possibility that there is a boot virus in the memory. If the system reports:
653312 Total Bytes Memory
or less, a virus is possible. There are other possible explainations for this missing memory. SCSI drives and some Overlay programs, both which are loaded at the first part of the Bootup, can also use Conventional Memory. See How to Tell If Drive Overlay Program Is Installed in Windows (Q186057), a Microsoft Knowledge Base Article, for more about this.

FDISK is part of Microsoft DOS. But partitioning a hard drive does not rewrite the Master Boot Record in most instances. Using the FDISK /MBR switch will not damage partitions. But it writes a generic code which can delete some information that may be needed by some systems. For instance, disk managers like EZ-BIOS are installed in the Master Boot Record. So it should not be used too lightly. When you run it, there will appear to be nothing happening. Unless you get a error message, it will most likely have done its job.

See the Microsoft Knowledge base article:
FDISK /MBR Rewrites the Master Boot Record for usage and more information.

Symantec Norton Antivirus

Current alerts:
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus Information Center Get information on the latest viruses and worms. Look at past viruses and get up to the minute Virus definitions.

Norton Anti-virus RESCUE Disks:
If you are using and earlier version of Norton Anti Virus, and you try to make Rescue disks, you may get a message that your last disk has insufficient space. When the program was created, the Rescue program would fit on 3 1.44mb floppy disks. However, as more viruses and Worms hit the world, more definitions were needed. Now, the program requires at least 4 to 5 disks.

Norton has a Downloadable Patch for version 4.0 that will overcome this. Download RESCUE4.EXE from Norton's Norton AntiVirus 4.0 for Windows 95/98 page.

E-Mail Settings:
Email settings are changed when Norton AntiVirus email protection is enabled. How it works. How to undo it if it doesn't work.

Norton Antivirus 2002:
A writer could not get the definitions Update to successfully load after a new installation. Script Blocking, one of the new features of NAV 2002, was apparently blocking NAV itself. Once Script Blocking was disabled, the Definitions update went smoothly. After that was completed, the Script Blocking could again be enabled. See Loved NAV2000, Hate NAV2002 at VirtualDr.com for the complete description of the problem and solution.