Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!andrew.cmu.edu!rs4u+ From: rs4u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Richard Siegel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Virus on the Mac? Message-ID: Date: 7 Mar 88 17:48:17 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 50 In-Reply-To: <1043@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> >> the hard drive wouldnt come up and it was treated as an non-mac disk. >> Was this a freak accident or are there virus programs out there which >> attack macs? If so, is there a program that can successfully detect This was more than likely a freak accident; it's possible for many public-domain, freeware, beta-test, and shareware programs to have bugs in them that cause crashes; when these crashes occur, it's possible that it'll happen at such a time when the disk directory or information is in an inconsistent state. If this happens, it's very possible that the Finder will tell you that the disk is not a Macintosh disk or that it's damaged. >happened was that the program screwed up your parameter RAM (PRAM) and your >little ole mac got confused about what to do at startup. Just run a program No, no, no.... The disk being damaged is not going to be apparent here, except for a refusal to boot from that disk. When the disk drive is " treated as a non-mac disk", it's damaged for sure. It's not a virus, it's just something that happens from time to time. In this case, your best (and probably only) way to recover the disk is to use the Disk First Aid program that comes with your Macintosh; it's on one of the Utilities disks. Boot up on another floppy and run Disk First aid; a drive selection box will come up. Click on the "Drive" button; you'll see either "Disk With Bad Name (SCSI #)" (where # is the SCSI address of your disk), or your disk's name, or something garbled (SCSI #). Click on the "Open" button, then click "Start." If Disk First Aid can fix your disk, it will do so. To protect yourself, it's wise to back up often (I use DiskFit; the choice of a backup program is subject to personal preference and is something of a religious issue) and to become familiar with a program such as Disk First Aid. This is one of the risks of using stuff that comes in over the nets; by and large, these programs go through absolutely NO testing and NO quality control - you are the beta tester. The good part is that there's some genuinely good stuff that is posted.... --Rich =================================================================== Rich Siegel Confused Undergrad, Carnegie-Mellon University The opinions stated here do not represent the policies of Carnegie-Mellon University. Arpa: rich.siegel@andrew.cmu.edu UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,sun}!andrew.cmu.edu!rich.siegel ==================================================================