-=> Mocking Earl Montgomery to All <=-
   
 EM> I ran MSAV and McAfee (both had outdated virus data files) and
 EM> neither detected the virus. Found AVP and it found and cured the
 EM> virus.
 EM> My system now reflects 640K conventional and Windows operates 
 EM> as it should. Someone suggested that even though everything
 EM> appears normal I should run FDISK /MBR. Since this is an
 EM> undocumented switch I hestitate to use it. Appreciate any
 EM> input on the use of this switch in my case.
there is absolutely no reason why you should use that switch... fdisk
/mbr is not meant for cleaning virus infections, and while it may do a
rasonable job in most circumstances, when it fails it usually does so
catastrophically - leaving your data inacessable or unrecoverable...
the idea behind using fdisk /mbr is that it writes a new mbr to the hard
disk, however it doesn't do anything to the partition table or any of
the other sectors on the first track so if you do have a virus that
moves or modifies the partition table, or takes up more than one sector,
or if you have a non-standard mbr or extended partition table or any
number of other problems then fdisk /mbr is going to make the problem
worse...
far better to simply have a backup of your mbr (or eve better, the who
first track) and restore from that backup when you have an infection...
however, you managed to recover with an av program (a good av program
too) and now all you really have to worry about is whether or not any of
your floppy disks are infected (avp should be able to clean them
aswell)...
... today's mock has been brought to you by the letters p, u, and # pi...
--- TGWave v1.20.b09
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