10th February 2004, 2:56 PM
How about the neck? Neck punching is the shiz niz!
Well, my anti-virus utility managed to actually catch this before, and completely rid me of it. I suggest eTrust's antivirus suite. It's not as well known as Norton or McAffee, but it's generally considered to be better than both. I think that's in part due to the fact that it's NOT as well known so virus makers don't consider it when making their viruses. I'll add that it has two seperate engines built in (Innoculate and Vet) so if one doesn't do the job, the other usually will.
Well, enough selling out :D. If you want it, there's many flavors. Since it was originally a business solution, the standard release is rather expensive (that's how I managed to get it in fact, again via my computery dad who gets these things for free all the time at work when they decide to just get rid of all the install disks they didn't use, yes a model of efficiency...). Mine's actually a version behind the current model, and upgrades ain't free, but it's fine by me to stay as I am for now (until that company's next upgrade :D). For you though, there's a free solution. They've got an EZ version for home use that's completely free, but it's only a trial for one year. Still, it should manage to clean it up at least.
As for why formatting your drive didn't do the trick, how did you go about reinstalling your system? Did you have to use a floppy boot disk? If so, that may have been infected, so I'd suggest making a brand new boot disk on a clean computer and not even putting it in the drive until you have wiped your machine first (XP does random A: searches, well not random but they happen often enough, generally when using any program that can load stuff from A:).
Oh yes, are you sure you did a FULL format? Formatting uses a program in and of itself, generally accessing a format function on the disk. This is stored "off" the actual partition, and in fact this area (I know, I'm not telling a good description, bear with me...) holds a sort of OS for the disk itself. This is accessed in order to manage running anything on the disk. It's possible this very area is what was infected. I'm not entirely sure what low-level means, but I assume you mean you already tried completely wiping the disk including this area using some special programs that do that sort of thing. If that's not the case, then try finding something that can do that. If that IS the case, and you're sure your floppy, if you were using one, wasn't even infected, then there's one last horrifying possibility. You may have an infected BIOS. In that case, depending on the motherboard you'll have to find individual solutions.
Now one last thing, I'm not sure if this virus can even infect the BIOS. I haven't really read up on it at all so I'm not sure how it works. If I were you I'd go to MS and the big name anti-virus company's main sites and look up this virus to find out how it operates.
Well, my anti-virus utility managed to actually catch this before, and completely rid me of it. I suggest eTrust's antivirus suite. It's not as well known as Norton or McAffee, but it's generally considered to be better than both. I think that's in part due to the fact that it's NOT as well known so virus makers don't consider it when making their viruses. I'll add that it has two seperate engines built in (Innoculate and Vet) so if one doesn't do the job, the other usually will.
Well, enough selling out :D. If you want it, there's many flavors. Since it was originally a business solution, the standard release is rather expensive (that's how I managed to get it in fact, again via my computery dad who gets these things for free all the time at work when they decide to just get rid of all the install disks they didn't use, yes a model of efficiency...). Mine's actually a version behind the current model, and upgrades ain't free, but it's fine by me to stay as I am for now (until that company's next upgrade :D). For you though, there's a free solution. They've got an EZ version for home use that's completely free, but it's only a trial for one year. Still, it should manage to clean it up at least.
As for why formatting your drive didn't do the trick, how did you go about reinstalling your system? Did you have to use a floppy boot disk? If so, that may have been infected, so I'd suggest making a brand new boot disk on a clean computer and not even putting it in the drive until you have wiped your machine first (XP does random A: searches, well not random but they happen often enough, generally when using any program that can load stuff from A:).
Oh yes, are you sure you did a FULL format? Formatting uses a program in and of itself, generally accessing a format function on the disk. This is stored "off" the actual partition, and in fact this area (I know, I'm not telling a good description, bear with me...) holds a sort of OS for the disk itself. This is accessed in order to manage running anything on the disk. It's possible this very area is what was infected. I'm not entirely sure what low-level means, but I assume you mean you already tried completely wiping the disk including this area using some special programs that do that sort of thing. If that's not the case, then try finding something that can do that. If that IS the case, and you're sure your floppy, if you were using one, wasn't even infected, then there's one last horrifying possibility. You may have an infected BIOS. In that case, depending on the motherboard you'll have to find individual solutions.
Now one last thing, I'm not sure if this virus can even infect the BIOS. I haven't really read up on it at all so I'm not sure how it works. If I were you I'd go to MS and the big name anti-virus company's main sites and look up this virus to find out how it operates.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)