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Part 1

Just when I was thinking that I could relax again after my travel problems, I had a new frustration.  Everyone else seems to have a virus with cough and fever - my virus is in the lime green laptop computer!  

I had installed Norton Antivirus last week before we got going too far with the internet.  It wasn't well behaved from the start, but I was able to scan, and I attributed my installation problems to our style of internet connection.  We first have to start the program that communicates with the cable modem.  Once this program verifies a sign-on and password, it activates Netscape (because this is my default browser) and gives us a new sign-on screen with a second user ID and password.  

After Nortons was installed, I gave everyone free reign of the computer and internet.  I installed Skype, a program to make cheap phone calls, as well as Edmo's Corel Draw program.  Edmo installed Java so he could do online banking.  Everyone has been using the internet a lot, and the old computer was relegated to Renzo's room to be used just for writing papers.  

I noticed some suspicious email messages a couple days ago, but Norton appeared to be catching them before they came in or went out.  However, they intensified yesterday, and I started to consider the possibility that I had a virus.  When I tried to manually run Live Update, it failed, and when I tried to run Norton from the icon or from the program list, nothing would happen.  The only things it would do were automatically scan emails and a complete scan if I invoked it by right clicking the C drive and selecting scan.  

I talked to Edmo about it this morning, and we decided that the virus had probably come from an infected email, a java script, or suspicious web site, but that I should probably reinstall Norton.  I did all the requisite reading and troubleshooting this morning, and asked everyone to stay off the net until I got everything functioning properly.  

While I was at Lenora's house for lunch, Edmo did some investigating of his own.  He learned that the Norton installation had left a back door open!  It was like an engraved invitation to the new variation of MyDoom, which just started circulating a couple days ago.  He was able to run Norton from DOS, and we learned that I had MyDoom on the disk and in high memory.  I told him that I was going to start referring to him as Dr Computer and that if he ever gets tired of being a medical doctor, he could easily have a new career diagnosing viruses on computers.  

I did everything by the book in troubleshooting the existing Norton, and then uninstalling it, removing the remaining files and icons, and reinstalling it.  The same thing happened again.  I tried everything a third time, and still it didn't work.  Angela has been telling me for the last couple days that she likes McAfee better, so I decided to buy and download that to see if I could get that working any better.  After I downloaded McAfee, I uninstalled Norton again and loaded McAfee.  It worked perfectly on the first attempt.  I'm going to request a refund from Norton tomorrow.  I'll consult with Angela about future software purchases!

Part 2

It's now after midnight on Monday night, and I've spent the entire day trying to fix the computer.  It worked fine this morning, but then I turned it off, went out for awhile, and when I came back, I learned that McAfee had found 25 infected files when Breno turned on the computer.  I ran a full scan and learned that I had a variation of Netsky.  McAfee couldn't clean, quarantine, or delete the files because they were copy protected.  I downloaded another program from the McAfee site to specifically clean Netsky viruses, and that couldn't delete them either.  I disabled System Restore, which means that I can't load former settings before today, but it was supposed to be able to allow me to delete the files which may have been part of an older setup before I installed McAfee.  Nothing worked - the 25 files were still there, and the file names were so long, it was impossible to tell where they were located.  I decided after nightfall tonight that I need to get a life and throw the computer out into the street and just go to the internet cafe. 

After dinner, I was talking to Edmo about Lenora.  Her virus has turned into a bad ear infection, and he gave her a prescription today.  I told him that I need help with my virus again too.  He knew immediately that I was talking about the computer.   He wanted to try to see if he could fix it.  He reminded me that he is a doctor and he is supposed to be good at identifying problems and understanding how to cure them.  He reviewed everything I had done and tried it all again with the same result.  He started the computer in safe mode so that there would be a limited number of files and processes available.  After scanning subdirectory by subdirectory, he finally traced the bad files to a subdirectory under Netscape that has all my mail.  The bad files were in a folder for one of my email accounts, but it looked like just one junk file.  Actually, the junk file is a series of emails files or documents that have been automatically marked by Netscape as junk and moved to this file.  We deleted the junk file from its folder and also from the Recycle Bin.  We restarted the computer, scanned again, and my computer is now virus-free. 

I have some serious questions about how these files could have entered my system and not be caught.  Maybe they are a new variation that McAfee just updated their program to catch today.  I probably need to be more diligent in checking the junk file, and clearing it every time I check the mail.  I know enough not to open these types of files, so I think they were just infected files sitting in the junk mailbox, but they caused a lot of trouble.  I am annoyed that I had to spend all this time trying to clean up from someone trying to cause trouble on the internet. 

Mostly I am in awe of Edmo (Doctor Computer) and his stubborn persistent attention to detail and organized methodology for getting to the root of a problem and how to correct it.  Although I doubt that I will be in need of a pediatrician soon, I imagine that Edmo is an excellent doctor, and I would recommend him highly to anyone with kids, or to anyone who wants to give him a grant to take a research sabbatical in some exotic location (perhaps Duluth!). 

Now that my computer is truly fixed, I intend to take the day off tomorrow and act like a retired person in a foreign country and explore all the wonderful cultural attractions that Goiânia has to offer!

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