Virus Q & A

by Beverly Rosenbaum

What You Need to Know

Q: Can I get a virus from a diskette by doing a DIR (directory) of the diskette?

A: Normally, in order for a virus to become active and infect your machine, the virus must first be executed. This means that if the diskette is infected with a Boot Sector Virus, you would have to attempt to boot your computer with the infected diskette in your A: drive to activate the virus. If your diskette has an infected executable file, then you would have to execute the infected file on the diskette for the virus to become active.

Q: Will I activate a virus if I decompress a compressed file with a virus in it?

A: If the ZIPPED or compressed file isn't self extracting, you can safely decompress the compressed files. After decompression, you should perform a scan on all executable files created by the compressed file. The only way the virus could become active is by executing one of the newly created files without scanning it first to make sure there are no viruses. Self-extracting files should be scanned prior to execution to verify that a virus has not attached itself to the compressed file.

Q: How do I clean a virus off my computer from inside of Windows?

A: All virus cleaning of your hard disk should be performed at the DOS level after booting from a clean write-protected diskette, rather than from inside of Windows. This is necessary to avoid possibly causing more damage to your files by trying to clean a virus while it is still active in memory.

Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member and can be contacted at brosen@hal-pc.org.