Well, I don't know a whole heck of a lot about the little devils, but I'll

tell ya what I do know.


  First off, the ol' "virus-inside-of-a-program-set-to-go-off-like-a-time-

bomb" isn't the kind of thing we're worried about.  We're mainly worried

about "boot blocks", the little part of the disk that the Install program

writes to, to make the disk bootable.  That's usually where the little

rascals hang out...and they move from there into Ram and hang out there,

even though you reboot.  Then they move back to the boot block of the next

unsuspecting disk you put into one or both of the drives, and the circle

grows.  That's the basic rundown on your average garden variety virus..some

embed themselves in ROM, some get into the hard drive, etc, etc.  The docs

that come with the virus programs are, obviously, laden with information.


  A cold boot, that is, turning off the power for half a minute, will zap

any virus residing in Ram..but that won't help the boot block.  For that,

you use a virus tool.  Virus_Checker has been the latest all-around virus

tool, but there are always new ones showing up.


  There are basically three ways you can come into contact with foreign

boot blocks.  First, of course, are disks that just kinda drift on in,

either from a friend, club, mail order, store..just suddenly, there they

are.  The prudent thing to do with any such disk would be to slap it into

df1 and fire up the latest virus checkers.


  Another way to catch a virus would be to slap one of your own disks into a

strange computer somewhere and voila!, instant system buddy.


  Lastly, you can get them from any compressed file that contains a boot

sector, such as any "warped" file.  Warped filenames end with the tag of the

warp type of compressor: .wrp for the original Warp, .lhw for the LHWarp

format, and .dms for the DMS compression method.  I downloaded a warped

file from a local BBS just the other day and sure enough, it had a "Disk-

Doktor" virus in it.  Grrrrr...  Anyway, treat any freshly-dewarped disk as

the enemy until proven innocent.


  Follow all the above and you most likely won't ever have a problem.  If

you need further help, there are many boards around that specialize in virus

control, Homebase BBS being among the foremost, number is 408-988-5190.

  Any further questions, don't hesitate to ask in the message base.




%Z