Section 6 of 6 - Prev - Next
All sections - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

widely distributed and accessible.  We will not give a wide-ranging
answer here, but will point out that Microsoft Corporation does not use
MSAV but a competitor's product.  We suggest that anyone considering
using the antivirus tools supplied with MS-DOS 6 as a significant part
of their virus defense should read the review available by anonymous FTP
from (amongst others) ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (IP = 134.100.4.42)
as /pub/virus/texts/viruses/msaveval.zip.


G12) When I do a "DIR | MORE", I see two files with random names that
     are not there when I just use "DIR".  On my friends's system they
     cannot be seen.  Do I have a virus?

No.  DOS's default commandline interpreter (COMMAND.COM) creates two
temporary files with unique names for every pipe character ("|") used on
the command line.  Starting with DOS version 5.0, these files are
created in the directory pointed to by the TEMP environment variable,
not in the current directory as they were in earlier DOS versions.  If
your TEMP setting is invalid or you have an earlier version of DOS you
will see these files in the current directory when you pipe the output
of a DIR command through MORE (or any other filter). If you don't see
these files in the current directory's listing, performing the command
"DIR | MORE" on the directory specified by the TEMP variable will reveal
them.

Generally, you would be better to use "DIR /P" instead of "DIR | MORE",
as this avoids the creation of the temporary files.  If you use an
alternative commandline interpreter, none of the above may apply.


G13) What is the ChipAway virus?  (Or ChipAwayVirus?)

The ChipAway virus is not a virus at all.  In fact, it is a poorly
chosen name for a good idea.  Many PCs have an advanced BIOS feature
that, when activated, prevents any writes to the MBR through BIOS disk
routines.  If active, this feature can cause problems if you install non-
DOS operating systems (like OS/2, Windows 95 or Windows NT), as their
installation routines typically need to write to the MBR, but for
general purpose computers, it is a good idea to turn on these options,
if they exist.

Unfortunately, one of the earliest and most widely available
implementations of this idea prints a message on screen at each system
startup to the effect "ChipAwayVirus installed".  This is supposed to
calm the owner's nerves, making them confident that their BIOS antivirus
system is working for them.  For fairly obvious reasons, it tends to
have the opposite effect!

[End of Virus-L/comp.virus FAQ sheet]


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.i

iQCVAgUBMHhJLo2yC8NpBpE5AQHa7gQA1Ye63ZVHxrk5rqMuTfj0468b+8tmdsfi
UpAdPblOPR44TwTFi6vU9BUYxGBjwoegO4yqufTpxEHlJDeaGBG3T3ACllROmr/4
1RqHm0oYh4APKgwZIM7vuWAevU3QFcM1cxY702w/5YD/AMnSXj5rIHfMHBtbYNo9
PFNR0XgrQ6o=
=q4G1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Section 6 of 6 - Prev - Next
All sections - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

© allanswers.org | Terms of use