Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!polyslo!vlsi3b15!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: MIROWSKI@FRECP12.BITNET Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Re: Request for info on viruses (PC) Message-ID: <0011.y8907121814.AA00631@ge.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 5 Jul 89 00:00:00 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 29 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu Responding to a "Request for info on viruses (PC)", Reynolds Cafferata says "be sure to write a booting sector to boot disks and non-booting to non- booting disks". There is no need to care about this because all boot sectors are identical for a given DOS version. FORMAT A:/S and FORMAT A: produce the same boot sector. So you can write the same boot sector to all disks. You should only verify that what you write to the disk is really a DOS sector and not a sector produced by PCFormat or other software. Depending on whether you ask for a booting or a non-booting disk, PCFormat will copy the DOS boot sector or a sector of his own (that only displays a message without trying to search for DOS files further on the disk) when you format one. It's rarely necessary to care about the distinction between 360 Ko and 1.2 Mo disks, because the information about the format is in the second sector of the disk (the first FAT sector) and DOS will take this second information in consideration. You will probably prefer to copy a 360 Ko boot sector to a 360 Ko disk and a 1.2 Mo boot sector to a 1.2 disk. The manipulation is very simple. You need only DEBUG : You start DEBUG C:+> DEBUG You put a non-infected, FORMAT formatted disk in A:, close the door and type -l 0 0 0 1 You replace it by the disk you want to desinfect and type -w 0 0 0 1 That's all | You can repeat the last line for all the disks you need. When you replace the boot sector on a booting disk, you should do it with a boot sector from the same DOS version. On a DOS disk you can also replace the boot sector doing SYS on it. It doesn't work on non-bootable disks. Adam MIROWSKI