Attention Please!

  This information is provided to you in the hope that it will prevent you
all some misery.  My day job is as a service technician at a local computer¨
retailer. We have encountered a virus created by Magic (a dispicable sort
from Denmark I believe). This virus is named Frankenstien and attacks the
Boot sector on ALL disks. Thus far, the only virus scanning/repair software
I've found to correct this one, has been Norton's Anti-Virus version 8.0.
Do NOT think that you are safe because you only use shrink-wrapped software
and don't share disks with anyone nor download from BBSes etc.  The systems
we've come across were infected by Microsoft shrink-wrapped disks!
 Two things of note on this virus, #1, the imediate symptom is that using
EMM386 with NOEMS or RAM parameters and using DOS=HIGH,UMB causes the
system to hang on start-up. #2, dos level reformats do NOT correct the
problem.
 If you're system is exhibiting these symptoms, obtain a copy of Norton
Anti-Virus version 8. Even if you've done a backup and do perform a
low-level format, the virus will return as soon as you've restored your
backup.  I hope McAfree will release a scanner capable of seeing this bug
soon but in the mean time, Norton is the only reliable means to solving the
problem.
 By the way, Microsoft claims not to have had any problems with DOS 6.x
which is where we first noted the problem. They in fact disavow(sp) any
knowlege of the problem which MSAV doesn't see! Please keep in mind that
this virus is not limited to any version of DOS, we simply found it first
on systems setup under dos 6.2.
  Robert

--- Simplex/2 BBS (v1.07.00Beta [OS/2])