If you receive an e-mail apparently from Norton Antivirus, it is itself a very nasty virus. Do not open it. Delete it immediately.
HJ
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HJ - thanks for the tip off. There are some malicious twerps about, aren't there?
BTW. Have you now got your computer sorted? Are you back in e-business?
Ian
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I received an update notice from Norton today. I went to their site and updated. I trust I have not been * had*
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Alwyn,
It depends on the source of the request to update. Was it a window that popped up (while on-line) that linked to their site or an e-mail?
I have never responded to any e-mail request to do anything from an AV provider, so often they are bogus.
David
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David,
It was an e-mail. It told me to click on the Symantec icon and then Live update. That would have taken me to the Symantec site I presume.
All seemed kosher!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you don't hear from me again........................
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Alwyn,
I hope you're OK but in the year since we've had Norton AV 2001 there has never been an e-mail reminder.
If you still have the mail you could look at it again and see the actual address the link leads to.
Others might tell you this is OK though.
David
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David,
The e-mail is headed..........
From: es@symantec.com
To: NAV-TECHINFO-L@lserver.symantec.com
Subject: NortonAntiVirusSupportNow! News Bulletin:March 19, 2002
Just rebooted and saw messages to say Set up was being updated.
Norton Instructions were to reboot.
Ok so far, as the chap who passed the second floor, having fallen out of a 20th floor window, said
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David,
Wonder when someone will say this is not motoring?
On checking, I find I have received 2 previous e-mails from Norton, one on 26th December last year and another on 13th Feb this year. Same format and no problems encountered.
I have Norton Internet Security 2002. Does that make a difference.
Still breathing..................
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Alwyn
Update requests are generated by the programme on your machine, not by Symantec. So, it sounds odd. You may be on the Symantec 'newsletter' which does advise of recent viruses, and suggests which date of virus definitions will catch them, so you can chose whether to update. This can include hyperlinks. Is this what you had?
Regards
John
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John,
Yes, but I was concerned when HJ mentioned the V word. As you say, the updates are generated from time to time automatically.
Strangely though, when I followed the links from Symantec, there were still updates available that had not been picked up.
On checking the Symantec site, I find they put out the latest updates "usually ona Wednesday", so I presume if I had not "manually " updated, then it would have been done automatically. Correct?
Thanks,
Alwyn
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No, updates will occur only when you log on and 'manually' update, unless you've configured your system to check for updates on the symantec site every time you log on.
Regards
john
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John,
Yes I have it set up to check for updates every time I log on. After all the updates yesterday , I logged on today and there it was, automatically updating again.
Thanks for your help.
Alwyn
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HJ,
Further, when you say "an e-mail, do not open it".
I am not able to stop mine opening; when I select it in Outlook Express, the e-mail appears.
I presume there is an attached file and it is to that you refer.
My e-mail from Symantec had no attachment.
Knees wobbling here....................
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Norton Antivirus 2002 with last week's updates identified the e-mail supposedly from Norton as being infected. Will now visit their site. No I'm not back in business.
HJ
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Don't know. I deleted it as soon as Norton went apeshit. Have re-dlwnloaded the latest live updates, though. Could be that what upset Norton so much was the next e-mail on the list, which I never saw because Norton deleted it. Please excuse my paranoia. My PC still isn't fixed. I may have to try and load whatever I can into another one and work from that, but I will inevitably lose lots of records, including the 13,500 e-mails answered over the last year or so.
HJ
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HJ,
You need a Zip drive and the Outlook Express backup program I use (Express Assist).
It reminds you to back-up your mails every time you boot up, to do so is just a single click. Then it saves all your mail folders/e-mails/dial-up settings/Internet Explorer Favourites etc.
Having done that to the hard drive a couple more clicks will save to the Zip drive, then the Zip disk can sit safely on the shelf ready for the next crisis.
I don't have anything like the level of mails you do but as of today I see there are over 1500 currently in Outlook Express, I couldn't stand to lose that lot! For this amount of mails the back-up file is 10.5mb.
I have a 100mb Zip drive and that is fine for me but even a 250mb one is only about £100, well worth it.
The Express Assist program is a free trial download and it was so good I happily paid the $30 to register/purchase.
Regards,
David
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Thats fine - until the zip drive fails (it will!) - can this software work with cd-r drives? That would be miles better - much cheaper and more reliable...
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Cheaper and much more reliable to buy a second hard drive (£60 for 20GB say) and use Norton Ghost to create and verify an 'image' file on the second drive. Even better, put the 2nd drive in a removable tray. The whole system can then be restored in 15 minutes or so if disaster strikes. Also useful to transfer all data/settings/applications to a new PC.
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Terry,
OK so the Zip drive might fail one day, but so could any component....like my hard drive that disintegrated after about a year.
But what's the problem, you have the Zip disk on the shelf and you just get a new Zip drive and the disk will run with that.
To me the fact that it is removeable media gives huge security. For example the PC could catch fire or be stolen and you still have the data. All our family images and all my writing is safely stored in this way.
I have no need of CD-R so the extra expense would be wasted.
Having said that the program I use just produces a back-up file and you could send it anywhere with the capacity to store it.
Lee is helpful in mentioning the idea of restricted mail content but then you've let them beat you. E-mail is a brilliant medium when you make it work for you so avoiding Word attachments/Images is far too restricting, like not going out in case the boys kick your shins.
Never give in!
David
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HJ,
I'm really sorry that you're having all this bother with the email - it's happening more & more it would seem, and to everyone.
I'm not an expert in the area, but is there anyway you can ousource your email somewhere that will hopefully trap dodgy attachments before they reach/eat your machine? Perhaps someone in the BR knows of somewhere providing some service like this.
An alternative would be to never accept e-mails with attachments. This might be a little restrictive for some, but considering you provide your excellent advice gratis, I'm sure anyone needing advice will comply.
Finally, have you considered supplying a standard form for people to send you mail from? I've got one here . The text only is sent to a server, and it then bundles it into an email which is sent to you as usual. The point is, people don't then send you emails, only text. No attachments and no bother (to everyone, this form is mine, please don't use it to send mail to HJ!). I'm sure one of the techhy guys could cobble one of these together for you.
I realise e-mail is very convenient, but it's causing you so much bother, I thought I'd try and give some alternatives.
Hope you sort it out soon,
Lee.
post to the gallery.
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Lee, thanks for that suggestion. I hate to pour cold water on your excellent intentions but we already have this facility on the website. Choose 'Contact Us' from the red navigation bar to the left of the screen. Trouble is, no one uses it! HJ's problem with email is really to do with the volume of traffic and the complexity of the accounts he has to use to manage it all. If you take into account how many emails he gets, it's a surprise more viruses don't get past the barriers.
But once again, thank you for putting your mind to the problem.
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Oh dear, sorry. Didn't see that. Still, that must prove it's a good idea! ;)
I hope it all gets sorted out; I understand computers, but am totally lost when the car acts up, so can appreicate the frustration that sets in when the PC goes out to lunch.
However at least I know that when the car bursts a pipe, it isn't the direct result of some malicious idiot somewhere. It's a rum-do, this computer malarkey!
Lee.
PS - DW- I can see exactly where you're coming from, but I've got very weak shins! I'm just off to worry about infected JPEGs....
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That's really helpful, Lee. I'll ask Stephen and Martyn to take a look. But unless we can configure to send the form back to all e-mailers asking them to cut and paste into it, it won't save us from some of the nutters who get the e-mail address from the paper and send in their viruses via that. Also I need to be able to accept JPEGs and apparently JPEGs themselves can carry viruses.
HJ
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Why do you need to accept jpegs?
This is a serious question, as I have been an IT professional for 25 years - the last 5 with my own PC training company.
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David,
regarding your zip drive...
I had one for a very long time and used it to back up all my files.
It then failed and began a continous clicking noise.
I tried other zip disks with no success.
Eventually I went to the Iomega web site and looked at the discussion forum on these drives.
They spoke of this as the death click and was the end of the zip drive with it not being economical to repair and being cheaper to renew.
However that was not the end of the problem as they said that any disk which had been used whilst it was in this clicking mode was now useless and using it in a new zip drive would ruin the drive.
If I had known this before reading I would obviously have not tried any other disks and to make it worse I wasn't sure which ones I had tried and could not safely have used them in a new zip drive.
I decided to junk it and installed a secondary hard disk instead.
This information was taken from a forum so I can't vouch for its accuracy but in your position if the drive begins clicking take it that its knackered and don't try any of your other disks in it.
alvin
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Alvin,
Appreciate the warning about Zip drives. You do bring up an interesting side issue.....forum advice accuracy.
I know this forum has a very high degree of trustworthy posts but I have noticed the computer sites can be visited by right brainless geeks. Some advice on issues/equipment I actually understand can be a mile off.
David
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Absolutely right. Treat anything on here as if it were "bloke in pub".
However, approach me professionaly (as in my PC training company) and I would advise everybody to have CD-RW as backup medium.
Backup a PC typically takes 3 CD's - at about 50p each!!!
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Are you talking about creating an image of the drive(s) using e.g. Norton Ghost which runs in DOS? Software such as Nero can create an image file on CDR although some files may be missing as it runs within Windows. More reliable and much quicker to use e.g. Norton Ghost to write an image to an extra hard drive rather than CDR + a hard drive (20GB say) is cheaper than a CD-RW drive. I certainly wouldn't trust my data to a CDR.
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