Owen Cook discovers a bit more about his files than he bargained for...
Microsoft’s Anti Virus program puts a file
in directories called CHKLIST.MS, but I
didn’t know this, so read on.
Son in Law installed my computer,
icons appeared like magic and I had no
idea what was going on, in the end he
showed me how to do a DIR and CD and
a few other commands in DOS, then he
left for the West. I did a screen print of all
the directories, this was valuable information !
Some time later daughter brought a
game home from school, there was that
association; kids, school friends, disks
and VIRUSES. One day I decided to see
what had happened to the directories after
this game was installed and LO, in the
directories there was CHKLIST.MS,
without doubt, I had a virus.
Close to panic I looked up the Help
Directory of Sixteen Bits, ring between
7.30 and 8.30 PM it said, but at 3.00 PM,
I couldn’t wait, so directory by directory, I
deleted CHKLIST.MS. At 5.30, all had
been eliminated and I trundled off for a
few beers, proud that I had killed my first
virus.
I nearly died the next morning when I
found CHKLIST.MS had reappeared.
Again in panic, I deleted them all again,
then very carefully looked at every file on
my computer. Starting in DOS, I found
one file called HPPCL.P00, with an extension
like POO, it had to be a joke,
maybe part of the virus, so ZAP, I deleted
that file.
Next I found a file called
MSDOS.SYS, this was suspicious, it had
MS in it, an extension called SYS, yes,
this was the system file for the virus, so it
had to go. When I tried deleting it, there
was a message saying it was a read only
file, and could not be deleted, HOW
INSIDIOUS, a virus system that could
not be deleted !
I was near tears, a $2000 computer
killed off by a lousy virus, to hell with
the expense, so I rang Son in Law in the
West and explained my predicament. I
can still hear him laughing.
And HPPCL.P00? Well it just came
back, and to this day, that is still a
mystery.
