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To: R Jennings who wrote (14512)	1/5/2001 11:19:55 AM
From: broken_cookie	Respond to of 110652

Rob and Mr. mark, It is a lot more destructive than it sounds in the symantec description. I found and removed "creative.exe", it was both in WINDOWS/Start Menu/Programs/Startup and in the root directory. The person using the computer is an AOLer. I don't use AOL and I'm not sure how much web cache it maintains, but there tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of ".jpgchange atleast now to LINUX" files in the root directory. because the FAT has become so unwieldy(maybe), it takes over a minute to delete 1 file. Two minutes to run a dir command even on a file that isn't there. I let the dir command scroll by for 15 minutes on the root directory before terminating it. It was impossible to do anything from a DOS boot, possibly because of the FAT or because of the weirdo file extension. I deleted .jp* from the root directory overnight and that freed up about 20MB or about 800 files. Clearly this was not the way to go and a format/ wipedisk was on the event horizon. With the virus removed from the startup, I decided to see if Windows would load. It does - takes about 90 minutes. From Windows Explorer, File selection (Mouse click) and deletion proceeds at the normal speed, so Debbie is cleaning out the root directory now. I'll check back after work, defrag, and run a fresh copy of Symantec's av software and see if normal performance is restored. AOL will have to be restored. Good thing there a 700 trillion AOL cd's in existance. MS Outlook or outlook express is not being used on this computer so the virus didn't spread. I'll wipe out the outbox, or whatever it's called on AOL, just to be safe. The virus was the same size as the symantec site reported. The file renaming was random and it's possible that powering off and on again restarted the file copying further adding to the prolifferation of root directory files. There was no "messageforu.txt" file in the root directory, but it's possible that the virus never finished executing before the machine was powered off. In any case, it would have been an infinite task to manually restore the filesystem. All jpgs, zips and avis are history. Be careful out there.

To: R Jennings who wrote (14512)	1/5/2001 11:23:35 AM
From: broken_cookie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 110652

Rob and Mr. mark, It is a lot more destructive than it sounds in the symantec description. I found and removed "creative.exe", it was both in WINDOWS/Start Menu/Programs/Startup and in the root directory. The person using the computer is an AOLer. I don't use AOL and I'm not sure how much web cache it maintains, but there tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of ".jpgchange atleast now to LINUX" files in the root directory. because the FAT has become so unwieldy(maybe), it takes over a minute to delete 1 file. Two minutes to run a dir command even on a file that isn't there. I let the dir command scroll by for 15 minutes on the root directory before terminating it. It was impossible to do anything from a DOS boot, possibly because of the FAT or because of the weirdo file extension. I deleted .jp* from the root directory overnight and that freed up about 20MB or about 800 files. Clearly this was not the way to go and a format/ wipedisk was on the event horizon. With the virus removed from the startup, I decided to see if Windows would load. It does - takes about 90 minutes. From Windows Explorer, File selection (Mouse click) and deletion proceeds at the normal speed, so Debbie is cleaning out the root directory now. I'll check back after work, defrag, and run a fresh copy of Symantec's av software and see if normal performance is restored. AOL will have to be restored. Good thing there a 700 trillion AOL cd's in existance. MS Outlook or outlook express is not being used on this computer so the virus didn't spread. I'll wipe out the outbox, or whatever it's called on AOL, just to be safe. The virus was the same size as the symantec site reported. The file renaming was random and it's possible that powering off and on again restarted the file copying further adding to the prolifferation of root directory files. There was no "messageforu.txt" file in the root directory, but it's possible that the virus never finished executing before the machine was powered off. In any case, it would have been an infinite task to manually restore the filesystem. All jpgs, zips and avis are history. Be careful out there. PS: There are a lot more jpg files than you think on your drive. A LOT MORE!