[villalobos]

I have a weird problem on an Imac B 8.6. The computer did freeze twice in a few minutes. I restarted without extensions, and everything went fine; I then restarted with OS 8.6 Base. The first half went fine, then the comp slowed down to a crawl, with a very busy HD, when the finder started showing up. It took about five linute to lount the HD, the trash can, and to show the files on the folder. After this, any command involving the finder (like opening windows) was very slow. I tried to run DFA and Norton without results.
I then decided to boot with the OS 8.5 CD, and looked into the system folder: there was there a file with the smiley icon, without a name, which could not be deleted or moved (error -110), same size as the system resources file, but with a very recent modification date (unlike system resources file whose date does not change). I did a clean reinstall of 8.5. Booting on this new OS did not allow me to do anything with this file.

The weirdest (and scarriest) is that there seems to be some activity in this old system folder: a file appears and disappears regularly in the folder when i am browsing the web for instance. Is this a know virus?

thanks

Villalobos

[Cipher13]

It does sound like a virus - although all those symptoms can be caused by other things.
I say zap pram, reboot from CD, and use ResEdit to trash that file.
Would it be possible for you to compress this file and send it to me?
Is the file with the simly face the one that appears and disappears?
Wheen did this start happening?
Does it happen all the time or at certain times?
Installed/downloaded much recently that could be to blame?

Cipher13

[This message has been edited by Cipher13 (edited 12-29-2000).]

[villalobos]

Cipher,

I tried to compress it with dropstuff: it asked first for a few CD-Rom I had used recently to be inserted (I just hit cancel each time) then it started to compress, claiming there was about 19500 files!!

I stopped it. When I get Info on the file it says 868 ko, same as system resources file. Then sometimes, the "Get info" box closes on its own.

There still is activity. The file which appears is the same. But it stays maybe half a second. It does happen fairly often. And it happens even when the folder is in the Trash.
I am baffled. I still think this might be a virus. I do not have recent antivirus file on Norton, so that Norton does not see anything special.

villalobos