[comp.sys.mac] Virus vaccines and warnings

ah2@stl.stc.co.uk (Amos Hornsby) (04/07/88)

Can someone tell me if I'm doing something wrong with the following
inits/cdevs from comp.binaries.mac: 
I have a 2.5MB Mac SE with internal 20MB disk and at present am not
infected by any virus. I downloaded the Virus warning init to warn of
the nVIR virus and placed it in my system folder and on rebooting I
get a System error ID=02 there's no way I can boot with it.

I removed the warning init after booting from floppy and tried the
Vaccine cdev. It appeared to install correctly and was in the control
panel so I tried it out. First I tried adding and removing fonts and
da's with font/da mover, no warnings appeared (the vaccine was
switched on) so then I tried adding/removing resources with ResEdit
and still I could not get the vaccine to give me a warning dialog box.
Does this mean Vaccine doesn't work or am I doing something wrong?

Finally I tried booting with both Warning and Vaccine present this
time I didn't get the system crash but still no warning boxes. Please
mail me with any comments. Has anyone else experienced a similar lack
of effectiveness from Vaccine?

-- 
   Amos Hornsby
   STC Technology Ltd. London Road, Harlow, Essex.
             (ah2@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...seismo!mcvax!ukc!stl!ah2
	     <or> PSI234237100122::ah2 <or> +44-279-29531 x2725)

spector@vx2.GBA.NYU.EDU (David HM Spector) (04/09/88)

Vaccine is normally silent unless some program, INIT, CDEV, DA, (etc) attempts
to modify the resource fork of a file.  Then you will get a dialog box asking
you to approve the modification.  If you are in Vaccine's "expert" mode, 
you will get a few tiny icons in the right corner of the menu bar for OK and
CANCEL.

If you want to see Vaccine in action, try running something like LightSpeed
Pascal or C, they add resources to their project documents and will cause 
Vaccine to squawk...

You must turn on Vaccine from the control panel and then reboot you Macintosh 
for Vaccine to start working.  

I haven't installed the Urlichs nVir init, but you shouldn't need it if
you have Vaccine...



				Hope this helps a bit...

					David

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