Preston@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL (09/22/90)
Some months ago, (Virus-L Vol. 2 No. 259) I mentioned a new problem to beware of when disinfecting a machine that was designed to save the machine state in CMOS RAM or to the disk. This is even more important with stealth viruses becoming common. The 4096 and others, if active in memory, will infect 200 executable files in a couple minutes while scanning for infection, or when verifying checksums. Specifically, I mentioned a new hardware IBM-PC card from Emerson called Accucard, which will do a graceful shutdown if power is interrupted. At that time, their distributor could not expain how to defeat the card when the computer was rebooted. They have since said this is not a problem with their card, as long as normal good cold boot practices are followed (from a known-clean floppy boot disk). Although the Accucard is plugged into the bus, it functions only with Accusaver software, which is called from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. As long as the floppy boot disk does not call it, there should be no difference from booting any other machine. Charles M. Preston 907-344-5164 Information Integrity MCI Mail 214-1369 Box 240027 BIX cpreston Anchorage, AK 99524