CompuServe Thread

#Lazarus Virus

6 messages in this thread
#7794From: Bill MussattoFeb 21, 1991 9:46 PM
Just visiting. A friend with an Amiga called. he's been infected by the "Lazarus" virus. I come from the MS DOS world so I couldn't give him any help. Any suggestions? I recommended that he go back to his original program disks and said his his data would probably be safe (It is in the IBM/PC world but not in the land of the Mac), is this true. Thanks for any help. Bill Mussatto
#7795From: Vic WagnerFeb 21, 1991 9:49 PM
I'm not a sysop, however the "Lazarus Virus" is not a virus at all. … The program DiskDoctor renames disks which it has 'repaired' as Lazarus. This is the normal behavior. If he has NOT run DiskDoctor, then… perhaps there is a problem. Report back if that is the problem
#7797From: Bill MussattoFeb 21, 1991 10:06 PM
Thanks, he did mention DiskDoctor. However, he said he is having his disks trashed. I'll try to get him over to be more specific. thanks for the quick response. Bill
#7817From: Marlene Zenker/SYSOPFeb 22, 1991 4:57 PM
If he's not waiting until the light goes out on the floppy drive goes out before he reboots or pops the disk out, it can trash the disk. Be sure he isn't doing that. Steve
#7965From: Bill MussattoFeb 26, 1991 6:15 PM
Thanks, I'll pass it on. He really needs to get on CIS. Wish I could have my questions answered as fast. Now if I can just find a good anti-viral program that won't be confused by a 486… Thanks again. Bill
#7978From: Steven WartofskyFeb 27, 1991 8:45 AM
Bill, Sounds like he's a new user, and is having the same problem I had my first couple of days as an Amiga user. The disk drive light, when a disk is being written to, will sometimes turn off (and the drive will stop) for a brief moment, and then come back to life to make a final write to the directory. If one is in a rush, and used to the way an MS-Doggie machine works, it's easy to take a disk out of the drive before it's completely updated (has to do with a more complex directory structure, for greater redundancy of info enabling more hardiness of data on-disk, ironically enough). The impulse, once a disk has been trashed this way, is to use the included DiskDoctor, which doesn't really help (described to me by my Amiga dealer as "the Amiga's evil twin"). Tell your friend to wait a few moments when a disk is being written to, even after the drive has initially shut off, to make sure all writes have completed. This will probably cure his "virus" problem completely. Once he gets the hang of what's going on, it's no more a problem than anything else in the computer world. Good luck! — steve