Viruses

[Niagara]

Hello everyone,

I regularly play games on my A-500 and came across some virusses.

I'm amazed that no more people encounter that problem. Could be i didn't find the right threads of course,but it seems to me that other sites practically don't mention them either. I can't imagine that i am the only one having problems on the matter.

I've had Lamer, saddam and some Forpid virus.

What i'm looking for is this;

1) Viruskillers or links for downloading them.

2) Does write-protecting the disks help?

3) How do i locate the source disk?

4) I have a cover-disk-virusscanner which asks, in case of a virus, if i want it to write a new bootblock. Is that effective/good idea?

5) Sometimes gamedisks that have allways worked suddenly give the "not a dos disk" message. Any disk i put in after that gives the same message. Is that one of the virusses above? Can the software on the disk be repaired then?

Loads of questions, but to me it is one of the two main practical problems i encounter.

I'll post a thread later on Read/write errors and malfunctioning disks but i have to define that problem first.

Any help will do and be much appreciated.

Nia.

[Buleste]

1) You can find some virus killers on aminet here.

2) Write protecting will stop any data including viruses being written to the disk so yes it does help.

3) Pass.

4) Do what you feel confident with. Try to have a copy of the disk that you are going to alter just in case.

5) That can be either a failing disk drive or most likely the floppy has just degraded so that it no longer works. You can try utilities like disksalv to recover/repair the disk. It's not necessarily a virus.

Hope this helps.

[Niagara]

Thanx for going over all of the points.
You've been a great help.

I'll go and check the viruskillers. I hope they're Easyadf-able. If not, i'll be back with more questions......GRRRRR!!!!

I was also trying to figure out the moment when you have tot throw away a disk. I dont want broken disks in my archive becouse otherwise you lose too much time trying to put software on it, only to find it doesn't work..again.
That really eats me up! ;-)
Is there a trick to find out about that?

Thanx!!
Nia.

[Harrison]

One of the best virus checkers available is Virus Workshop. It was one of the last to be maintained and so is the most complete for scanning all known Amiga virus types. Take a look on classicamiga at http://www.classicamiga.com/content/view/4611/175/ where you can get info about Virus Workshop, and download the program.

Another one is called VirusZ and it nearly as good and available on aminet.

There were not that many Amiga viruses. Especially when compared to the PC market, but there were still some horrible ones.

A good procaution when booting games from floppy disk is to always write protect the disks unless the game specifically requests to save a game, then unprotect the disk to save the game, then reprotect it straight after.

Virus infections on the Amiga were quite often designed to stay in memory, even after a soft reboot. And they can remain in memory for a few seconds when the Amiga is switched off. So always power down the Amiga between games for at least 30 seconds before booting a different game.

It's easy to get hold of another copy of a game if your copy is corrupt. There are many places you can find ADF versions of the disks, which you can then write back to real disks on your Amiga. For single game disks the best place is planetemu.net

But if you would like to obtain a more complete collection of Amiga games, to have a near complete collection to access and use then the TOSEC set is highly recommended. PM me for more details if you are interested in this.

[Buleste]

Which Kickstart will you be using for your virus checking?

[Niagara]

Thats a hard one!
Ill have to check that first. Might take some time though.
The moment i find out i'll let you know.
Nia.

[TiredOfLife]

Try this link.
Helps you create bootable antivirus disks as well as the usual installable hd versions.
Also had warning and guidance as well as a few antivirus proggies.

http://www.vht-dk.dk/vhtdk/amiga/amiga.htm