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Fred "gives" secretary a virus



Author: Fred Cranston
Date: December, 1989
Keywords: fred's follies column
Text: The past month has been too full of follies for comfort. I gave my department secretary a virus, or rather I was responsible for her Mac II getting a virus. She suddenly began having trouble with her Mac, did a virus check using VIREX, discovered that she was infected, and I was the suspect because I had given her a program to play with. It couldn't have been me, says I, I always practice safe computing and I don't even have a modem. However, to keep everybody happy I checked. Not only did I have a virus, but every System disk I had was infected and quite a few of my applications. I had just installed a new hard disk and it was infected. Where did it come from? I don't know. I now committed my next folly. I used VIREX to repair all of my disks including my hard disk. My folly was to repair my System. DO NOT repair a corrupted System. Replace it with a clean, uncorrupted System that has never been near a virus. I wasted hours trying to find out why I was getting messages from my
Mac such as: Your picture looks like garbage. I can't reconstruct it. But I hadn't tried to make a picture. Finally, one of my colleagues suggested that I must have a corrupted System, so I did replace it with a clean System and am now back in business. I now check every disk for a virus before I use it. My next folly was to attempt to use the To Multifinder command when I had opened up while not in Multifinder mode. A bomb appeared and my screen froze. I cannot seem to use To Multifinder. I have to set my Startup for Multifinder and Restart. Can anyone tell me what the problem is? Happy Holidays and beware of the Virus Kid!

Copyright © december, 1989 by Fred Cranston


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