Just a follow-up on the original post.

Post #104,193 by Andrew Grygus 5/30/03 6:45:09 PM Reply	Just a follow-up on the original post. The program that blew out the partition table and boot data wasn't Partition Magic, it was Symantec's Norton AntiVirus - and it did it again in another week (but I had all the details written down and fixed it in a couple minutes). It appears NAV wakes up every week or so and looks at the boot info and partition table. It see's they're different from something it has stored somewhere and says, "EEEEEEEK! A Virus must have done this", and restores the old boot data and partition table. Needless to say, I unistalled Norton and removed every trace of it I could find. Told the client he could reinstall it at his own risk. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #104,267 by deSitter 5/31/03 2:34:41 PM Reply	Re: Just a follow-up on the original post. With some regularity, a co-worker or friend will ask me to fix a PC. Almost always, NAV is installed. The first thing I do is remove it. The users are astonised at the performance boost. I tell them about removing NAV, and strongly urge them to avoid ALL anti-virus programs, since they are all useless. A little instruction on safe use and floppies is enough protection. I usually point out that Windows is the real culprit, and that virus attacks against Linux are virtually impossible. NAV is surely the worst of a bad lot. What a despicable program. -drl
Post #104,275 by Andrew Grygus 5/31/03 3:17:20 PM Reply	Safe use and floppies? I haven't seen a floppy based virus for five years. Everything is email and network now, and some are very sneaky. Many will infect just by appearing in the Outlook email preview window. They can even be implated by visiting a hostile Web site. Expecting normal Windows users to not get infected is futile. I seldom see a computer that doesn't have at least a few infected files on it these days. Some antivirus program is needed. I agree that Norton is the worst of the lot. Any product that's "Norton" anything, I avoid like the plague. They are all designed to be "smarter than the user", and put their hooks deep into the operating system. If something actually does go wrong, they can be highly destructive. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #104,276 by deSitter 5/31/03 3:19:13 PM Reply	Missing word Safe email use. Including disabling the preview pane. Floppy virii can still be a plague in schools - so kids bring them home. I usually download the "safe mode" scanners for particular families. They do as good a job as the full products. I would be nice to acutally have a working virus program. I haven't found one that's worth the performance hit. -drl

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