miket660
06-12-2001, 05:23 PM
Hello all. I've learned some stuff the hard way, and thought I might pass on the info.
For the past few days I've been getting an increasing number of apps that won't load - "[filename] is not a valid WIN32 application." Initially, reapplying the latest service pack seemed to fix it.
I spent quite some time trying to find references to this online, with very limited success. To cut a long story short, the culprit was a virus. It was an old one that infects executables. It can and does run just fine on Win2k. The virus scanner I had started warning me that a growing number of executables were "suspicious" but couldn't identify the cause, let alone fix it.
InnoculateIT personal edition found the beast and fixed it, but only after stupid here reinstalled Win2k twice, had major BSOB on boot problems about 7 or 8 times, physical memory dumps, the whole bit - and was almost sure I'd blown away all existing data and settings once.
The problem was simple. I mis-diagnosed it, and created ever greater problems for myself in trying to fix it. I trusted an old freeware scanner to do the job, and presumed that when it didn't like some files, the changes brought about by the service packs and so forth were altering the properties of the files, causing its concern.
The moral is that prehistoric boot sector viruses and exe-killer type viruses are still out there and they can still spoil your day.
Mike
For the past few days I've been getting an increasing number of apps that won't load - "[filename] is not a valid WIN32 application." Initially, reapplying the latest service pack seemed to fix it.
I spent quite some time trying to find references to this online, with very limited success. To cut a long story short, the culprit was a virus. It was an old one that infects executables. It can and does run just fine on Win2k. The virus scanner I had started warning me that a growing number of executables were "suspicious" but couldn't identify the cause, let alone fix it.
InnoculateIT personal edition found the beast and fixed it, but only after stupid here reinstalled Win2k twice, had major BSOB on boot problems about 7 or 8 times, physical memory dumps, the whole bit - and was almost sure I'd blown away all existing data and settings once.
The problem was simple. I mis-diagnosed it, and created ever greater problems for myself in trying to fix it. I trusted an old freeware scanner to do the job, and presumed that when it didn't like some files, the changes brought about by the service packs and so forth were altering the properties of the files, causing its concern.
The moral is that prehistoric boot sector viruses and exe-killer type viruses are still out there and they can still spoil your day.
Mike