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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