Re: ATM 386 Notebook Virus Alert "Empire Monkey.b" virus

[Wayne Topa <wtopa@dmcom.net>]

        Subject: ATM 386 Notebook Virus Alert "Empire Monkey.b" virus
        Date: Thu, Apr 13, 2000 at 07:43:22PM -0700

In reply to:Del Stanton

Quoting Del Stanton(sd20@earthlink.net):
Del> 
Del> ATM 386 Notebook Virus Alert
Del> 
Del> I recently received two of the 386 notebook computers that Sam Michael
Del> has made available to the ATM community.  They arrived well packed and
Del> in excellent condition.  As was to be expected the batteries were quite
Del> worn out: one will run the machine for perhaps 20 minutes, the other is
Del> quite dead.  But they will be most serviceable.  One will be used to
Del> control a small tabletop computer-controlled milling machine.
Del> 
Del> I have been writing BASIC programs using the qbasic.exe interpreter and
Del> today I copied some of these to a floppy, to transfer them to my desktop
Del> 
Del> computer to print them out.  To my consternation my McAfee virus
Del> detection program found the boot record of the floppy to be infected
Del> with "Empire Monkey.b" virus.  McAfee was able to clear the disk of the
Del> virus.
Del> I did a full reformat on another 3.5" floppy with my other desktop
Del> computer (w/o
Del> McAfee installed) and checked that disk on this computer (w/ McAfee) and
Del> 
Del> it came up clean, so apparently the one laptops are the source of
Del> infection.
Del> No other disks have been used with them.  Just now I reformatted two
Del> disks
Del> on the two laptops and one produced a clean disk, the other disk had the
Del> above
Del> boot sector virus.
Del> 
Del> I do not have Windows installed on the laptops (though I do have a set
Del> of Windows 3.1 installation 3.5" floppies) - what should I do to cleanse
Del> 
Del> the laptops?

Del

  I run Linux so haven't used Microsoft for a few years.  I do recall
  that to clean the Master Boot Record (MBR) you did 'fdisk /MBR'.
  That will wipe out the MBR and you then must reload the operating
  system.  
  
  When I get my boxes I will do that and then a full format of the HD.
  Someone mentioned that formating will not remove the Virus.  I
  believe that is because the formating does 'not' format the MBR.

  Clear Skies

   Wayne 
   N 42 32.776
   W 74 41.201

-- 
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
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