Author: Frederic Friedel
Date: 05:48:50 11/12/00
I have received the following warning from a colleague. He is extremely computer literate, so we can be sure this is not a hoax. However I can find nothing about this or the "Bymer" virus. Does anyone know more? ------------------ Dear Fred, I have been attacked by a nasty Internet virus. I am not sure where it came from. It seems to be a version of the Bymer virus. You catch it via the Internet. The most obvious symptom is that your computer keeps trying to log on to the Internet (if you have it set up to log on without manual confirmation, then bad luck). Examination of the registry revealed an odd entry referring to a file wininit.exe, which was set to load at Start-Up (note that this does not appear in the Start-Up folder, only in the registry). I went to the Start-Up diagnostics in System Information and found an alien entry there, again referring to wininit.exe. I removed this entry, but this did not cure the problem. Going to the diagnostics again revealed that the virus had replaced its entry there. I then manually deleted wininit.exe and a few others files which seemed to be activated by it. The virus didn't like this and took retaliatory action. When I rebooted the computer I got to 'Starting Windows 98...' and an instant later the screen filled with gibberish and the power to the computer went off (aren't these software-controlled power switches wonderful). The next problem is that pressing the on-off switch didn't restart the computer - I actually had to unplug it from the wall! It was even impossible to boot into safe mode as the power cut-off came first. Finally, I rebooted the computer from a floppy, reinstalled Windows and now everything seems OK. I have just ordered some firewall software.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.