I staff a 12 Mac lab at a K-8 school. Had to deal with a virus which
infected all the machines last winter.
It came from an old game disk my own son brought in to use at the lab
(oops). We had used it for years on a "no-brainer" Mac Plus with no
problems (no hard disk to infect), so it hadn't occured to me to check that
disc before allowing him to use it at the school lab.
Since all the students keep their files on their own floppies, and use
different computers, the virus spread to all the machines before i noticed
any problems.
Disinfectant did handle the problem handily. I used the experience as a
teaching tool, and had each of the 4-8th grade students disinfect their own
discs, and do one of the lower grades students' discs as well. They all
were amazed at how the infection had spread, and understand a lot more
about the problem now. The 8th graders also helped disinfect the hard
disks. We lost a few days of lab sessions because of this, but I think the
experience taught it's own lessons!
Every month or so, I check to see if there is a new version of
Disinfectant out. I'm not toooo paranoid about the problem. My kids and I
download tons of stuff from lots of sources, and are pleased to report no
virus problems at all from downloaded files. We only had that one
incidence (it was the N-vir A virus, as I learned from John Norstad's
excellent Disinfectant resource files), and it was an 80's something
vintage shareware games disk. I think the troublesome game was "Wheel of
Fortune".
Gay Wiseman
rustybel@foothill.net