🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Besnard <daveb@charmf.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi,
> I have to hardware support many Mac's of differing types in an office
> environment. One user of a 8500/120 ( the only one in the office ) has
> had a severe virus attack which infected system and application files.
> The viruses have been removed but the damaged system files are causing
> bombing out. The OS on this m/c is 7.5.5 and the install CDROM has been
> lost. As this system contains vital data files any disaster recovery
> must not lose these.

I'm sure you don't need someone preaching at you, but if you're storing
'vital data files' you should really have backups somewhere. An
anti-virus program would be useful as well; there are several commercial
packages, or Disinfectant is free from various local sites or:

ftp://ftp.nwu.edu/pub/disinfectant

> I do have immediate access to OS 7.6.1 but I need to know whether this
> version will be ok. I have used several different hard drives in this
> machine and it will not boot versions 7.5.1 or 7.5.3 but will 7.5.5 !!

I can't seem to get at Apple's technical sites in order to confirm this,
but it seems like the 8500/120 needs something (an enabler?) that's part
of System 7.5.5 in order to boot. If this particular thing is in 7.5.5
it will be in any later versions, so 7.6.1 will be fine (make sure it's
a licensed copy!). It is also essential to perform a 'clean install', so
you leave any gungey parts of your old system behind.

If you fancy upgrading, System 8.0 has many enhancements and seems
pretty stable, although this may not be the time.

Hope this helps (anyone disagree?)


Cheers,

Mark

--
Mark Etherington
mark@roxley.demon.co.uk

In article <19971130191920120592@roxley.demon.co.uk>,
mark@roxley.demon.co.uk (Mark Etherington) wrote:

>I can't seem to get at Apple's technical sites in order to confirm this,
>but it seems like the 8500/120 needs something (an enabler?) that's part
>of System 7.5.5 in order to boot. If this particular thing is in 7.5.5
>it will be in any later versions, so 7.6.1 will be fine (make sure it's
>a licensed copy!). It is also essential to perform a 'clean install', so
>you leave any gungey parts of your old system behind.

Just on the point of having a system enabler: System 7.5.3 does have
"System Enabler 827" but System 7.6.1 does NOT.  It messed up my display
when left in by an "Easy Install".  Your advice on a clean install would
have prevented me from having this difficulty.

Keith

Keith Crook
keith@valperga.demon.co.uk

Keith Crook <keith@valperga.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <19971130191920120592@roxley.demon.co.uk>,
> mark@roxley.demon.co.uk (Mark Etherington) wrote:
> 
> >I can't seem to get at Apple's technical sites in order to confirm this,
> >but it seems like the 8500/120 needs something (an enabler?) that's part
> >of System 7.5.5 in order to boot. If this particular thing is in 7.5.5
> >it will be in any later versions, so 7.6.1 will be fine (make sure it's
> >a licensed copy!). It is also essential to perform a 'clean install', so
> >you leave any gungey parts of your old system behind.
> 
> Just on the point of having a system enabler: System 7.5.3 does have
> "System Enabler 827" but System 7.6.1 does NOT.  It messed up my display
> when left in by an "Easy Install".  Your advice on a clean install would
> have prevented me from having this difficulty.

It occurs to me that if you want a _really_ clean install, you should
backup your drive, do a low level format, install a new System Folder,
and then gradually transferback everything that hasn't been corrupted.
Not a bad idea after a virus attack, but you can wave goodbye to doing
anything else that day. Just a thought.


Cheers,

Mark

--
Mark Etherington
mark@roxley.demon.co.uk

In article <1997120319023813755@roxley.demon.co.uk>, Mark Etherington
<mark@roxley.demon.co.uk> writes
>Keith Crook <keith@valperga.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> In article <19971130191920120592@roxley.demon.co.uk>,
>> mark@roxley.demon.co.uk (Mark Etherington) wrote:
>> 
>> >I can't seem to get at Apple's technical sites in order to confirm this,
>> >but it seems like the 8500/120 needs something (an enabler?) that's part
>> >of System 7.5.5 in order to boot. If this particular thing is in 7.5.5
>> >it will be in any later versions, so 7.6.1 will be fine (make sure it's
>> >a licensed copy!). It is also essential to perform a 'clean install', so
>> >you leave any gungey parts of your old system behind.
>> 
>> Just on the point of having a system enabler: System 7.5.3 does have
>> "System Enabler 827" but System 7.6.1 does NOT.  It messed up my display
>> when left in by an "Easy Install".  Your advice on a clean install would
>> have prevented me from having this difficulty.
>
>It occurs to me that if you want a _really_ clean install, you should
>backup your drive, do a low level format, install a new System Folder,
>and then gradually transferback everything that hasn't been corrupted.
>Not a bad idea after a virus attack, but you can wave goodbye to doing
>anything else that day. Just a thought.
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>Mark
>
>--
>Mark Etherington
>mark@roxley.demon.co.uk

Thanks for responses to date. My main problem was that the de-virused
and damaged system was 7.5.5 and although I had upgrade floppy disks
from version 7.3.1 to 7.5.5 the machine would not accept them -
presumably because the disks themselves were 7.3.1. Because the machine
stores the current version of the OS in non-volatile memory it is only
possible to upgrade the OS to a higher version. In my case 7.6.1 or
8.0.0. The user decided it would be quite nice to try out version 8 so
that I have upgraded their Mac to 8.0.0.
The upgrade was flawless and their applications, documents and data are
still in tact. I was quite impressed with the new OS and relieved I
didn't have to back-up the 1 gig and do a raw install. Come to think of
it - given my comments above - how would I have re-initialised the drive
to version 7.3.1 so that I could then upgrade back to 7.5.5 ?
The user has now invested in more efficient anti-virus software and
promised to back-up their system in a proper manner.

Cheers,  
-- 
Dave Besnard

In article <bPI9MAApBeh0EwjZ@charmf.demon.co.uk>,
Dave Besnard <daveb@charmf.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Thanks for responses to date. My main problem was that the de-virused
> and damaged system was 7.5.5 and although I had upgrade floppy disks
> from version 7.3.1 to 7.5.5 the machine would not accept them -
> presumably because the disks themselves were 7.3.1. Because the machine
> stores the current version of the OS in non-volatile memory it is only
> possible to upgrade the OS to a higher version. In my case 7.6.1 or
> 8.0.0.

This is incorrect. No Macintosh stores the current system version in it's
non-volatile memory (PRAM). Also, there is no system version 7.3.1. Perhaps
you meant 7.5.3? The only reason you'd be unable to install 7.5.3 on a
machine would be if the machine was newer than 7.5.3 so that the installer
didn't recognise it.

Paul Durrant

In article <B0AD858B966811969AE@192.168.1.1>, Paul Durrant
<pdurrant@durrant.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <bPI9MAApBeh0EwjZ@charmf.demon.co.uk>,
>Dave Besnard <daveb@charmf.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for responses to date. My main problem was that the de-virused
>> and damaged system was 7.5.5 and although I had upgrade floppy disks
>> from version 7.3.1 to 7.5.5 the machine would not accept them -
>> presumably because the disks themselves were 7.3.1. Because the machine
>> stores the current version of the OS in non-volatile memory it is only
>> possible to upgrade the OS to a higher version. In my case 7.6.1 or
>> 8.0.0.
>
>This is incorrect. No Macintosh stores the current system version in it's
>non-volatile memory (PRAM). Also, there is no system version 7.3.1. Perhaps
>you meant 7.5.3? The only reason you'd be unable to install 7.5.3 on a
>machine would be if the machine was newer than 7.5.3 so that the installer
>didn't recognise it.
>
>Paul Durrant
>
Thanks for your correction. My mis-conception was due to the following.
The machine that had had the virus attack was running MacOS 7.5.5 which
had been upgraded from 7.5.3 using upgrade diskettes. I have an
identical 8500/120 machine which is my own personal workstation and ran
from an identical 1 gig hard disk drive to the problem Mac. This ran
MacOS 7.5.3 and would boot from the hard drive _and_ my Disktools
diskette. When I tried to boot the bad Mac from the same Disktools
diskette it refused, giving an error message - I can't remember the
exact wording - along the lines, " This machine cannot load this version
of the operating system...". Perplexed at this, I then swapped the hard
drive from my machine into the bad Mac and to my amazement produced the
same error message. My hard drive would not boot on the identical
machine although it undoubtably had the correct version of enabler
installed.
I then replaced the hard drive in my machine and it booted, no problem.
I upgraded my machine from 7.5.3 to 7.5.5 using the upgrade diskettes
and it all worked fine. Furthermore on installing my hard drive back
into the bad Mac it booted no sweat. What I did then was to add the
users hard drive to the SCSI bus and transfer all the required data
across to my hard drive. Having recovered all the users applications and
data I've just left the drives permanently swapped. The user has now
upgraded to MacOS8. I now have initialised the users hard drive and
installed my own OS8. 
I don't see how the above can be attributed purely to enabler problems
!! 

-- 
Dave Besnard

Dave Besnard <daveb@charmf.demon.co.uk> wrote:

[snip]

> I don't see how the above can be attributed purely to enabler problems

Hmm...  I've had some very wierd problems on my Performa 475 which I
eventually narrowed down to a problem caused by corrupted PRAM, which in
turn was probably caused by a software fault.  Maybe the extra enabler
caused some similar havoc?

Today's lesson: computers are complicated.  I don't understand them, and
they do wierd things somethings.

Rowland.

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