Rich's Ramblings
by Rich Schinnell
Ounces of Prevention
This month I am going to reiterate my admonition to you:
PLEASE BACK UP!
I have had yet another frantic phone call from a member whose hard disk had gone completely south. They did not even consider that they would ever need a backup. Too bad but they are out of luck with their data. Of course you can always go back to all those original application diskettes and re-install everything, but what a pain. Take the time and do a backup today. You will be glad that you did, especially when that unexpected hard disk crash occurs.
Additionally, you might want to check that your tape backup really is working. Tape backup is what I call a warm fuzzy; it lets you feel proud and smug when your hard disk crashes. But if you have not tried to restore a file from tape, then it is high time you gave it a shot, as there has been conversations on the BBS's about some people having trouble restoring files from their backup tapes.
I have had to do some wizardry on a friend's computer that had the ANTI-EXE virus. It is a strange virus that does not seem to do anything except create errors for Windows 3.1 users. It is transferred to your machine by doing a DIR on the infected disk. So be careful and use the latest version of F-PROT (now 2.21), which is available on the MIX BBS. FP-221.ZIP is the latest as of this writing (29 Feb 1996). By the time you read this, there should be a new version. It's well worth the investment in time to download and run on your machine, especially if you use disks made in other people's machines.
The only way to get rid of some of these viruses is to have a completely clean bootable disk for your A drive. Please make one now:
FORMAT A: /S
This will create a disk for your A drive that is bootable.
While you're at it, you might want to add the latest version of F-PROT to this new diskette in your A drive so that you can disinfect your hard disk if you ever suspect a virus. Add the FORMAT.COM, FDISK.EXE and SYS.COM programs to this disk so that you will have them whenever you have to re-install the system files to your boot drive. Some boot sector viruses can only be gotten rid of by using the DOS FDISK.EXE program:
FDISK /M
The /M is a undocumented feature that rewrites the Master Boot Record without destroying any data.
One thing to consider is that you might need some special drivers on your A drive when you boot from A. These drivers are sometimes necessary to access your C drive, e.g., the Disk Manager driver (DMDRVR.BIN) that some of the older machines, without extended BIOS, require for hard disks larger than 512 MB. Look in your CONFIG.SYS file to see if you have such a line as DEVICE=DMDRVR.BIN or some strange thing like that. Copy the driver files to your bootable diskette and put the necessary DEVICE statements in a CONFIG.SYS file on the diskette. Try it out before you find yourself in extremis. (That translates to "very agitated and aggravated.") In other words, boot this new system disk in your A drive and see that it works and allows access to the C drive.
Then make sure that the bootable diskette is write protected. This is very important. If you try to boot from a diskette that is not write protected, or you try to read it from an infected C drive, you might just transfer the virus to your "clean" diskette. Food for thought.
Connecting to the Internet
Techy talk explained: Some have called me for help on their Internet connections so I thought it might be a good idea to explain a bit about what this program called Trumpet Winsock is and what it does for you. TCPMAN.EXE is a shareware (try-before-you-buy) communication program that CPCUG provides on the SLIPKIT disks, our starter set for the Internet connection to CPCUG.ORG. It is shareware, so if you use it, you should send in the $20-25 registration fee to the author.
To digress: Trumpet Winsock Dialer is a special communication
program that will dial your modem and connect to the Internet
via your ISP (Internet Service Provider), setting up a TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) connection. It
is not the same type of communication program as Procomm or
Qmodem. It is designed for one purpose in life: to establish
this TCP/IP connection to the Internet. Once you have it set up
to dial the correct phone number and use a script to
automatically log you into your account, it then can interact
with the TIA (The Internet Adapter) program running on
CPCUG.ORG. Trumpet Winsock will also work for those of you with
SLIP or PPP accounts on an ISP.
The TCP/IP connection makes the Internet available to your Internet clients -- programs like Eudora Mail, Netscape Web browser, FTP file transfer programs, and Telnet applications. These "clients" cannot do anything by themselves. The first thing each does when you try to execute it is to look in your computer's memory for a signature of WINSOCK.DLL. If it finds it, then it uses this .DLL to send and receive inquiries to the Internet. Works great and millions of people use the Trumpet version -- some use the Windows 95 internal Winsock dialer, and the OS/2 people use the OS/2 Warp version. All work fine and as long as you have a TCP/IP connection to the Internet via a WINSOCK.DLL compliant dialer, then your Internet clients for Windows should be real happy.
To digress even further, if your Netscape or Eudora complains about not being able to locate the network, you probably have not properly connected to the Internet through a successful TCP/IP connection. Using the Trumpet program, you can do all the dialing and connection in the Manual mode by going to the Dialer and then selecting Manual Login. This will allow you to type to the keyboard and then to the modem. If you have the setup correct in your Trumpet configuration, you should be able to type ATZ and receive an OK from your modem. Then type ATDT 301 847-5252 (if that is a local call). The modem at the other end answers and you have a connection. At the prompt, ACCESS LOGIN:, type cpcug (lower case is important), then press the Enter key in response to the password. You should then enter your cpcug.org userid at the next prompt and then your password. Keep pressing Enter until you finally get to the Unix command line prompt. Then type TIA and press Enter.
Now you must press the Escape key on your keyboard, and if the
gods are good and you have held your mouth correctly, you should
have a successful TCP/IP connection. It should say, "Start your
SLIP software." Now you can minimize your Trumpet Dialer window
and double click on any of your Internet clients. All of the
client programs' communications to the Internet will be going
through your WINSOCK.DLL. Netscape should work without any
problems and you should be able to send and receive your mail
via Eudora. One thing to watch out for is that you should make
sure to configure each of these programs to show your
userid@cpcug.org and the POP mail server
as cpcug.org. The news
reader configuration should read "Newsreader.digex.net" -- some
earlier versions of the SLIPKIT came configured for
"news.digex.net" but that should be changed.
Next month, I will try to step through the configuration for Windows 95 people to set their internal Winsock dialer up. (Remember, it is Winsock, not Windsock.)
Rich Schinnell is retired from the USN and Vitro Corporation, and does a little network and PC consulting in his spare time -- especially now that he is no longer the president of CPCUG and has been trying to leave the office staff alone. <G> He can be reached at (301) 949-9292 by land line; for those not computer-communication-challenged he's at schinnel@cpcug.org or on the MIX as Rich Schinnell. He still has his BBS up at (301) 949-8848 as he has for the past 14 years.
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