Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!nucsrl!accuvax.nwu.edu!jln
From: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: RWatcher taking me for a ride!
Message-ID: <10330129@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 89 16:14:26 GMT
References: <258@melbcae.edu.au>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 39


Hi - I'm John Norstad, the author of RWatcher.

> It would appear that RWatcher does NOT like MFS disks!  Well, either
> that or 400K disks, but everytime I mounted this disk [which I checked
> and it was "clean"] the finder would beep 10 times and quit to the
> finder, which would again try to mount the disk and then beep 10 times
> and quit to the finder, etc.

You have a sick machine.  RWatcher does not look at, complain about,
or have anything to do with any kinds of disks, MFS, HFS, 400K, 800K, or
otherwise.  The MFS floppy in question may indeed be clean, but I'll bet
your hard drive (or other boot floppy) is infected.

I suspect that your system is infected with INIT 29, and that you've
reconfigured RWatcher to look for INIT 29, or all INIT resources, or
something.  The details are complicated, and I can't really say for sure
what's happening on your system.  Which leads us to the next point...

> An interesting point about RWatcher, if someone installs it in a
> system folder that is already infected with a virus,....

See page 3 of the RWatcher document:

     WARNING: RWatcher WILL NOT protect you if you install it on
     a system that is already infected.  ...
     
The purpose of RWatcher, like Vaccine, is to protect clean systems 
against subsequent infection.  If you install it on a system that is
already infected all bets are off, and lots of strange things can 
happen, including the beep 10 times infinite loop phenomenon.

John Norstad
Academic Computing and Network Services
Northwestern University

Bitnet:    jln@nuacc
Internet:  jln@acns.nwu.edu
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