FAQS! FACTS! FAX! 030 (22/10/96)

A WORD OF WARNING

With reference to the question about viruses (FFF 15/10/96), it's not just ‘programs or data of obscure origin’ that carry viruses. We at Government Computing magazine have received two in recent months - both on files which carried Microsoft Word 6 articles submitted for publication. One came from a large computer company, the other from an important industry association.

The moral is, even if you get files - by disc or e-mail - only from reputable organisations, check them first. Always.

A. B. G.

A

Macro viruses, embedded within Microsoft Word 6 and Excel  files and documents, have become the latest PC bogeyman though it’s difficult to say how widespread they are. You can take some comfort in the fact that so far they’re relatively easy to detect and eradicate, moreover they’re unable to do the same kind of damage as viruses written in assembly or programming code. Nevertheless they can be very troublesome.

The MDMA virus  (Many Delinquent Modern Anarchists) infects Word 6.0 on both Mac and PC. It strikes on the first day of the month, deleting files and putting up messages. DMV, Concept and Prank are the most widespread and contagious Word 6 viruses, though they’re fairly benign and can be easily spotted in the Macro menu as AAAZAO, AAAZFS, and hiding in legitimate macros, including AutoOpen, FileSaveAs and PayLoad. 

A macro virus called Nuclear can be very destructive. Once in the system will infect every document created with the Save As command. It contains a time-bomb that tries to delete important system files on the 5th of April, and inserts a message ‘Stop all French nuclear testing in the Pacific’ at the end of printed and faxed documents. Check for names like DropSuriv and InsertPayload in the macro menu. Colors, aka The Rainbow Virus can be difficult to detect. It messes around with file and close commands whenever an infected document is opened and changes Windows colour settings at boot up. Atom is particularly nasty, and will be activated on December 13th when it will erase files in the current directory, and password protect documents, making them inaccessible, it’s also very difficult to detect.

Most auto-loading macro viruses should show up if you hold down the shift key, when opening a document. This disables any commands contained within the file. Virus detection utilities for Word 6 can be downloaded from: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/

MAIL CALL

Is it necessary to leave your computer switched on all the time, to receive e-mail coming in at various times of the day?

R. W., Seaton Ross

A

No, assuming you have an account with a service provider, such as CompuServe, AOL, BT Internet Demon etc. Your incoming e-mail is automatically stored in a personal mail box on the service provider’s computer; every time you log on to the system it will alert you to the fact that mail is waiting.

COLOUR BAR

In May last year I brought an Escom P60 mini tower with a 8Mb RAM, 1Mb PCI graphics card, dual-speed CD ROM, 16 bit sound card with DOS 7 and Windows 3.11 pre-loaded. Whenever I attempt to run any CD ROMs the system insists that it only supports 4 colours, and I need to be able to display 256 colours. Was I sold a pup, or am I being ultra-naive?

P. J. E., Northwhich

A

It sounds as though your system has been set up incorrectly, with the wrong display driver. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, all you need to put things right are the correct Windows or driver discs. Unfortunately as your software was pre-installed, you probably didn’t get a set of discs with the PC, and since Escom are no more, you can’t turn to them for help.

Check first though; look for the Windows Setup icon in the ‘Main’ group in Program Manager. Click on it, and it will show you the display driver currently in use; it should make some mention of 256 colours. If not, and you want to change it, pull down the Options menu and click on change system settings, you’ll them be able to scroll through all the drivers currently on your system. You may be lucky and find a suitable 256 colour driver is already installed. By all means try it, but do take note of the driver that you’ve been using. There’s a chance that when you re-boot the PC, the display will disappear. If that happens re-boot again and at the C: prompt type ‘cd\windows’, hit enter, then type ‘setup’, and you can then restore your original driver, or try a new one. Ultimately, though we suspect you will need to obtain the correct driver for your video card. You could try contacting ICL, who have taken over Escom’s helpline. Call them on 0990 134394, though be warned you may be charged. Diamond Maintenance also run a support line for Escom owners, their number is (01622) 688817.