🚀 go-pugleaf

Cataloging Manager, Kornhauser Library
(502) 588-5767

  A local user believes he had a virus. I am waiting for more
information from him, but I was wondering if anyone could identify the
problem or the virus from the following limited information:

  "There seems to be a new virus on the market right now, and it does
only one thing.. It scramble both FATs and writes them to disk.. So
when you comeback to copy or read or pull a file from that floppy, you
get the ARIF error {Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail}.. If you have it, you
will find that even a low level format will not clear the problem.
Nortons is about the same, with the virus. Both are useless. The
survival of a perfectly good disk depends on unmarking the 0 sector.
The virus apparently marks this sector bad on the disk and you must
then remove it. Nortons disktool will not even read the disk. It just
throws a low level format screen up. The only way is to go manual or
toss the disk."

  None of the locally prominent viruses resemble this vague
description.  Does anyone have any idea what problem (virus or not)
could scramble both copies of the FAT and mark the first sector of a
floppy as bad?

 Michael Purcell, Cataloging Manager
 Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, University of Louisville
 MOPURC01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu / MOPURC01@ULKYVM.Bitnet / FAX:(502)588-8527