We have a new (as of late Sept.)computer. Pentium III. Made at Master Computer in State College, PA. It has Norton and Jammer (I found that out when I tried to download Jammer the other evening). It has Office 97. I use Outlook Express for fax and mail. This morning between 9:57 am and 10:30 am some of the addresses in the "inbox" changed. Prior to 10:30 the addresses were all of the type Jane Doe@aol.com---after 10:30 many of them were just Jane Doe. No @anything.com. Just Jane Doe. Why? Also, my hard drive has been buzzing and clicking all day long. Even got a grey box saying it was doing something to Drive C while I was composing an email. Suddenly the box was there, the drive went zzziiippp and the box went away. The date is OK. And so far we only use this computer to play online. Records are kept in offline computers. My husband is an old time programmer--translation :Fortran and assembler and machine code. Not familiar or comfortable with Windows and non DOS based systems. He just says "HMMMMMMM, probably not good." If anyone has time to explain this, I would appreciate it. Pam

-- Pamela (jpjgood@penn.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

Its probably already too late, but you should install a good virus checker immediately. It does appear that your computer is infected with something nasty.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), January 01, 2000.

There are a lot of answers as to what is
going on. The best thing to do is to always
have a back-up of your system.dat and user.dat
that you can use to restore your original
settings once they are messed with. The following
batch files can make back-ups and restore your
system files with little effort. When all is going
smooth you can run your back-up. When things go
bad run the restore. Cut and paste these into
Notepad and save with a .bat extension.

regbak.bat
___________________________________________
@echo off
c:
cd\

echo Backing up autoexec.bat
copy autoexec.bat autoexec.ba1/y

echo Backing up config.sys
copy config.sys config.sy1/y

echo Backing up command.com
copy command.com command.co1/y

echo Backing up io.sys
attrib -h -s -r io.sys
copy io.sys io.sy1
attrib +h +r +s io.sys

echo Backing up msdos.sys
attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys
copy msdos.sys msdos.sy1/y
attrib +h +r +s msdos.sys

cd\windows

echo Backing up system.dat
attrib -h -s -r system.dat
copy system.dat system.da1/y
attrib +h +s +r system.dat

echo Backing up win.ini
copy win.ini win.in1/y

echo Backing up system.ini
copy system.ini system.in1/y

echo Backing up control.ini
copy control.ini control.in1/y

echo Backing up user.dat
rem add this line if you use profiles -- cd profiles\(user name)
attrib -h -s -r user.dat
copy user.dat user.da1/y
attrib +h +s +r user.dat

echo Done backing up
____________________________________

regrecov.bat
____________________________________
@echo off
c:
cd\windows attrib -h -r -s system.dat
copy system.da1 system.dat/y
attrib +h +s +r system.dat

rem add this line if you use profiles -- cd profiles\(user name)
attrib -h -r -s user.dat
copy user.da1 user.dat/y
attrib +h +s +r user.dat
__________________________________
Also you can get the freeware StartCop to
eliminate programs that are running that
you don't need.

Your husband will love these.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), January 01, 2000.

Pam,

Sorry to hear about your puter. Wish I had a answer for you and hope Master Computer can will help (they have a reputation around here for standing behind their stuff).

I'm shocked my piece of junk is still running smooth. Did you ever check out the computer salvage at the university? I can't wait until the end of January to hit it again. All the Dept. Heads were responsible for their own upgrades and y2k fixes. Ought to be to a hardware junkies paradise. If there's anything I can do to help from this end to help, just let me know.

-- Dale (Inexile84@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

cd\windows attrib -h -r -s system.dat
should be in two separate lines
cd\windows
attrib -h -r -s system.dat

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), January 01, 2000.

Pam, Well, just today i recieved an e-mail with no time, no e-mail address or name- just this in the subject line:

I didn't open this one, i deleted it right away.

A while ago, i got an email with the time reading: Invalid Date Time.

Anybody have any suggestions?

-- Emily (emailproblem@email.com), January 01, 2000.

When you say it has Norton, are you meaning you're running Norton's Anti-Virus Program on your 'puter? I have that on mine and there's a LIVE UPDATE feature on it. Since I heard there was an expectation of many viruses around the new year, I would attempt an update to my virus lists. If no new viruses have been discovered or reported to Semantec's Norton site, it'll simply say something like Lists are already updated and that'll be that. During the previous 7 days or so I've run the live update and it's downloaded updated listings 4 times.

I strongly suggest that everyone protect your investment sitting on your desk by updating the virus lists in your anti-virus program often. I've also noticed when going to Semantec's website and reading up on some of the recent nasties like Melissa, etc. they usually mention MS Outlook program. It might be a little too late for this now, hopefully not.

My 2 cents.

beej

-- beej (beej@ppbbs.com), January 01, 2000.

That would be sYmantec. Geez I hate spelling things wrong. I was up really, really late last night. You understand...grin.

beej

-- beej (beej@ppbbs.com), January 01, 2000.