I think my Computer has a virus on it. My brother downloaded some questionable files. Damn him. Now my computer is extremely slow, and random. Sometimes my preferences just don't work .I havn't lost any files yet, but How can I remove this virus? I don't have any money to buy a software package. I know there are free windows antivirus packages. I am hoping the mac has the same. Can anybody helo me?
Anonymous
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I think your best bet is to just copy over all of your documents to another partition or another drive, and whipe and reinstall X. Yeah, it's a pain, but at least you know you got rid of the junk.
Last i heard there was no known OS X virus. anyone else know anything about a X virus going around. You may want to check on that i really don't think its a virus, but i could be wrong.
Oh, Hazel, look. The field! It's covered in blood
In a recent interview with bill gates in pc magazine, bill states something similar to the following. "I dont think windows is more prone to viruses and hackers than any other os, but were just the biggest so people try to attack the biggest". lol.
I doubt you have a virus. AFAIK, there still aren't any for OS X. It's possible that there is some program that he installed that borked your system, but that's probably all. A good thing to check is to run Process Viewer and see if a program is taking up a crapload of CPU time and then delete it. Be careful not to delete something that's needed, of course.
There aren't any free AV programs for OS X, and there's pretty much only 3 contenders in the commercial market. McAffee, Norton, and Sophos I think.
But again, I very much doubt that it is a virus.
James M. Baker
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Computer Nerd
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My site
And since there are no known OS X virus, I'd assume that those products really just scan for Classic Mac OS viruses, and have hooks written in them to do OS X work if a vire-X is written and found. Then they might also scan for macro viruses and such, but I dunno the extent that those can do harm in OS X.
Jon.
No one should be protected from the effects of his own stupidity. - Anton Szandor LaVey in 1988 (There is a certain irony in this quote... :p)
That about sums it up. I have Virex, only because it came free with my .Mac subscription. It does scanning and such, but I think it's pretty much old stuff and macros, maybe Windows viruses, too, so that you don't spread them. I'm not even sure. I never really use it. I haven't updated it in months.
James M. Baker
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Computer Nerd
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My site
damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!
My brother's user folder was about 500 mb a week ago. I looked at it yesterday and it was 3 gb. My boot partition only had about 4mb free. This is what was causing the sluggishness and randomness. I completely deleted his account, and all things it contained. Somehow, the filing system must have misrepresented this size, as the sum of the parts ( inside of the folder) did not equal the whole. My computer is back to normal now. I did read on numerous site that there are no know osx viruses. Thanks for all the genuinly helpful replies. :coolmac:
You might want to consider booting into single user mode and doing a fsck.
The lazy man would rather exert himself than make two trips. -- Slovenian saying