onehawaiian

my coconut powered computer crashed so i had to swap it out with one of my other computers. what a pain in the @ss.

okay, does anyone know if i have some sorta virus running around in my old computer or if someone is hacking some of my stuff? in the last couple of days (since tues), i've been getting email from "familiar" addys... most are from people in my address book! they are pretty big files (around 150k) but the emails don't contain anything. the only thing is the email addresses are not exact, just the first names are correct. i'm wondering if my icq got infected? or both my email accounts? anyone know what's going on?

Chumpman

from your description it sounds like your friends might have gotten hit by a worm or email macro-virus... a lot of them nowadays will access the outlook address book and send emails out to spread itself...

If you wanna clean your comp this is what ya do:
1) go to a friend who has a computer you KNOW is clean
2) make a boot disk there
3) download the DOS (yes DOS!) version of F-Prot Antivirus and cram it on to a 1.44 floppy
4) disconnect your comp from the internet (if you have cable or ADSL)
5) boot your computer off the floppy and scan it using F-Prot... what this does is it skips your HD's boot record so any boot-sector viruses won't get activated
6) IF your comp is clean, boot it normally and connect to the net, go to www.symantec.com and download norton antivirus...
7) LiveUpdate the anti-virus so it has all the latest info on worms
8) Scan your comp... use worm removal tools if necessary
9) At this stage your comp should be clean... if you're afraid of hackers i'd recommend you set up a firewall using BlackICE PC Protection (it has less annoying pop-ups). ICQ 2001b or newer supports firewall protocols so once that firewall is up, neither your internet connection, ICQ, or proxy can be hacked...

if you need more info, PM me...

onehawaiian

thanks for the reply! but it's a good thing i have a few computers lyin' around the house. i'm gonna get that done as soon as i can. the f-prot stuff is pretty good. i ran the ms-dos virus remover and it worked pretty good. so yeah, i'll try that. if i can get back into my system that is.

Chumpman

if you can't even boot to floppy it means you got hit by a nasty old virus that wiped your bios/cmos... in which case you'll need to flash your bios manually with an IC programmer, and if you can't get one, then you've got a really expensive paperweight dude!

or it could mean that your floppy drive/cable is dead or maybe even your power supply... in any case though, I hope it all works out dude!!!