ViewBoot v1.01 -- (c)1988 by Late Night Hacks 2 MAR 1988 About ViewBoot ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This program provides a convienient way of examining the boot block of a disk to determine the presence of a 'virus'. The program presently checks for the existance of the AEK, SCA, LSD, and Byte Bandit viruses. If the virus check itself is defeated, the program still allows you to view the boot block of a disk in an ascii format to check for character strings that may alert you to the presence of a virus. ViewBoot may be called from either the CLI or the Workbench environment. When the program is first called, it will examine the disk in DF0 and then present the contents of the boot block to the screen. You may then choose other drives present on the system to examine by way of an Intuition type menu. After ViewBoot has scanned a disk and found a virus, it will display a requester alerting you of it's find and state which virus it is. When a virus is found, ViewBoot allows you the option to erase it then or you can continue checking disks and delete it later. ViewBoot also allows you to check your memory for the presence of a virus, and if not able to find any of the viruses mentioned above, it allows you to have a peek at the memory where the above viruses are found (0x7ec00 - 0x7f000) just to be sure. As it does after reading a disk, ViewBoot will display the memory in ascii format so you can check for character strings that may alert you to the fact that a virus has made itself a nice warm home in your computer's memory. Using ViewBoot ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are in the CLI environment, just type VIEWBOOT and pretty soon you'll see a wierd looking screen and you can go about scanning your disks for nasty little viruses. If you want to use ViewBoot in the WorkBench, you must first rename the file 'ViewBoot.inf' to 'ViewBoot.info'. Once you have renamed the file and gone into WorkBench, double click on the icon that looks like a Jump Boot and you'll be presented with the wierd looking screen at which time you may do the same as the non-lazy person does from the CLI (just kidding Vern). ViewBoot Menu Options ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- View Boot Block of - |df0:| Right Amiga-0 |df1:| Right Amiga-1 |df2:| Right Amiga-2 |df3:| Right Amiga-3 This option is for viewing the boot block of the specified drive. Install - |Install df0:| |Install df1:| |Install df2:| |Install df3:| This option will delete the virus and perform an INSTALL on the disk in the drive specified. I would suggest against using this on disks where some form of copy protection is placed in the boot block. The disk is probably useless if it has a virus on it anyway so your best bet would be to send it back to the software house that put the program out. Memory - |Virus Check| Right Amiga-C |View Memory| Right Amiga-V These two options allow you to check your memory for a virus. 'Virus Check' will search for any of the above mentioned viruses and if one is found, it will display a requester telling you of it's find. If one is not found, it will tell you that also and recommend you do a visual search just in case. 'View Memory' will display in ascii format the memory location of the virus. If you see nothing but a bunch of ................'s you can be pretty sure that one has not found it's way into your computer. Well, at least not at that location... If a virus is found, I would suggest powering down the system and restarting with a fresh WorkBench disk (assuming you still have one). Quit - Right Amiga-Q Exit back to the real world? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- When viewing your disks, some character strings to keep an eye out for are: "Virus by Byte Bandit" (Byte Bandit Virus) - Sector 0 "Something wonderful has happened" (SCA Virus) - Sector 1 "Another future of programming" and "Spread by Micro-Master" (AEK Virus) - Sector 1 I've not seen the LSD virus yet, but a couple of people have told me that the program picks it right up anyway. Thats about it for now so I will end this by stating that this program is placed in the public domain by the author (me, Brian Meadows) and may be distributed freely to all but it is not to be sold. If you have any comments or bug reports, I can be reached at the numbers listed below. Brian Meadows (205)854-2356 - Voice or (205)854-6407 - Vikki Highfield's Magnolia BBS (300/1200/2400bps) 24hrs a day