[Ronin]

Thanks for the tips Manxy. The school I work at here in Tokyo is quite small. Less than 10 teachers and the owner who is a rather nice elderly lady.

Anyhow, he is already in a bit of trouble because there ARE rules against using the computer for personal business but he did it on a day when the owner was not in.

I am going to go there early today and see if I can figure out what virus he caught and try to remove it without using the nuke and pave method. Losing the database will be costly.

The thing is I know that system has Norton Antivirus installed on it because I checked it just last week and did a harddisk scan, so it must be a new bug to get past it.

[ManxyGal]

The thing is I know that system has Norton Antivirus installed on it because I checked it just last week and did a harddisk scan, so it must be a new bug to get past it.

Norton Antivirus is good - if it's a fairly new version (2002 or 2003 version of the software) and if it's kept up-to-date. Otherwise, it's useless (as any antivirus software would be in that situation). And you have to pay money every year (or two - you can choose that option) to keep getting the virus updates.

When I started at my current job a couple of months ago, I discovered that all of the PCs were running Norton Antivirus... but the newest version of the software was 4 years old, and none of the virus definition subscriptions had been renewed in 3 years. In other words, there was no antivirus protection. That was my #2 thing to fix, as a matter of fact (#1 thing to fix was the lack of firewall).

A 10-user licensing package for Symantec Antivirus Small Business Edition runs about $430 for one year; they also offer a discount if you purchase two years' subcription up-front. It's worth it.