VOGONS


First post, by GabrielKnight123

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I might have a virus on my 486 so ide like to virus scan it I see there is one virus protection program from dos days called F-PROT which I'm happy to use but since my hard drive is IDE I can use my IDE to SATA adapter to connect to my main win 10 pc to scan with Kaspersky but how do I scan the boot sector or should I use F-PROT in dos

Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

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Tricky. Most modern antivirus software should still be able to do a boot sector scan,
even if it's only meant for floppy disks or USB pen drives (those may use a boot record or Master Boot Record aka MBR, still).
On the other hand, MBR partition style HDDs are nolonger as common - people use GPT now.

On DOS, you can use the MS-DOS 6.x AntiViurus, Carmel Turbo Antivirus (TNT Virus), F-Prot, H+BEDV Antivirus (now Avira AntiVir), Norton AntiViurs, Central Point Antivirus etc.
But yeah, F-Prot might be the last being updated.. 🙁 On the other hand.. How many new DOS era boot viruses are there ?

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 2 of 5, by chinny22

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How do you think you got the virus?
Do you think its from an old zip file or similar so the virus is also around 20 years ago? (Period correct virus, that's taking period correct to a new level) It does mean you can use a period correct scanner.
If it may be something more recent I'd plug the HDD into a modern PC and scan and then try F-Prost or whatever after.

Although how much is on the PC? I've suspected my XP machines maybe infected and just format/rebuilt the things. As long as you have all the software on hand (in my case on a 2nd partition and the network ) this is easier then messing round with old scanners.

Reply 3 of 5, by Jo22

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+1

Though it doesn't hurt to try out the old scanners and find out what kind of virus was there (for the sake of curiosity).
I mean, if one of the scanners detects a virus, how good (bad) is the chance there's another one?

Also, let's don't forget using write-protected floppies.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 4 of 5, by GabrielKnight123

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Some great ideas chaps especially about the zips, possibly got a virus from a zip and the virus could be newer from recently but I'm not sure, I saw problems from original doom and at first it was just a freeze the pc would get stuck and could only be rebooted with a power on and off, then it did a square fade out like you see on game screen transitions to a new map area but it did the fade out and the monitor went into a no signal bouncing box, this is why I want to try a virus scan first before testing other things like ram or the new power supply it has in it, oh yeah I have tried a reinstall of doom too but it might be the install files are corrupt or bad so I'll use a different rar or zip

Reply 5 of 5, by Jo22

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Hi again, you can test your old virus scanners with an EICAR test virus, maybe.
That "virus" is non-harmful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file

Back in the 90s, other such test files or dummy "viruses" shipped as utilities with Shareware CD-ROMs.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//