Anyone else hit by the Michelangelo virus this year?

eyeinthesky

Sorry, but McAfee couldn't find it's own butt with both hands and a torch!

esuhl

RussJK wrote: »

I'm surprised you ran 98 on such a relatively outdated machine, was there a benefit?

Of course. It meant I could use a computer! The alternative would have been to refuse to use it as I couldn't afford a new one at the time.

The only other operating system I owned was Windows 95, but since it was less stable and more buggy, without being significantly less resource-hungry, Win 98 seemed the obvious choice.

RussJK

esuhl wrote: »

Of course. It meant I could use a computer! The alternative would have been to refuse to use it as I couldn't afford a new one at the time.

The only other operating system I owned was Windows 95, but since it was less stable and more buggy, without being significantly less resource-hungry, Win 98 seemed the obvious choice.

Fair enough! I guess you had to 'know someone' for Win 95C since it was only available as OEM for some reason, which was a shame really as it was a dream to use.

It had solved the stability issues from Win 95a or 95B, and didn't have the bugs that Win98 introduced. I'd say it was the least buggy version of Windows I'd used up until XP with service packs, and quite speedy. Moving to Win98SE seemed like a big step down performance & stability wise really - even if it had more features.

I did try BeOS once when it came out in 1998, just for the novelty factor. It probably would have been ideal for an older machine.

esuhl

RussJK wrote: »

Fair enough! I guess you had to 'know someone' for Win 95C since it was only available as OEM for some reason, which was a shame really as it was a dream to use.

It had solved the stability issues from Win 95a or 95B, and didn't have the bugs that Win98 introduced. I'd say it was the least buggy version of Windows I'd used up until XP with service packs, and quite speedy. Moving to Win98SE seemed like a big step down performance & stability wise really - even if it had more features.

I did try BeOS once when it came out in 1998, just for the novelty factor. It probably would have been ideal for an older machine.

Win 95C?! Well - that's the first time I've ever heard of it - very interesting! The version I had was Win95b I think... and moving from that to Win98SE was like a breath of fresh air. I very reluctantly upgraded from that to XP... but was a lot more impressed with XP once I started to use it. I still prefer it (in terms of UI layout & usability) to Win7.

I would have played around with Linux (in fact, I think I did a bit), but I needed to use Visual Studio so I was stuck with Win98...

Hammyman

RussJK wrote: »

It seems to get more evolved each year.

I've really got to learn not to turn my computer on next 6th of March, after getting hit just about every time over the last nineteen years! Next year will be the 20th anniversary, so I'll make it a special occasion by not getting infected for a change.

Remember that McAfee is your best bet to stop this. In fact you could say the whole antivirus is built around stopping this one particular menace, undistracted by lesser malware in its peerless and unsung struggle across the ages against the Michelangelo virus.

I've never had it and I've never used McAfee. You have to be a complete idiot to get this once and definitely multiple times. Microsoft closed the route of infection long ago. I guess you mustn't be running Windows Update.

RussJK

esuhl wrote: »

Win 95C?! Well - that's the first time I've ever heard of it - very interesting! The version I had was Win95b I think... and moving from that to Win98SE was like a breath of fresh air. I very reluctantly upgraded from that to XP... but was a lot more impressed with XP once I started to use it. I still prefer it (in terms of UI layout & usability) to Win7.

I would have played around with Linux (in fact, I think I did a bit), but I needed to use Visual Studio so I was stuck with Win98...

Yeah I doubt a lot of people heard of it as they were pretty quiet about it; I only caught wind of 95C towards the end of it's life. Like I said, it's been the only time I've had a PC OS give me a 10 second boot time (i.e. from turning it on, to reaching the desktop/login). When I was forced onto 98SE, it was back to 21 second boot times again. It did improve a bit after a custom install though, stripping away a lot of the bloat including the browser integration which was more developed by this stage than what was in 95C. 95B wasn't much better than 95, just as unstable for me, so 98SE would have been better.

Interesting what you say about XP vs Win7 - I've always been a very slow adopter until Windows 7. Moved relunctantly to XP when it was well matured, and again reluctantly to Vista as no XP laptop had 4gb ram. Vista really was as bad as everyone made out, so you can guess why I readily took the cheap upgrade to Win7 I'm used to it now.

KillerWatt

RussJK wrote: »

Afterall it was John McAfee himself who realised that 5 million computers were infected with this virus back in 1992. How many do you think will have it now, especially given that only about 4% of computers are running McAfee according to OPSWAT? It must be 5 billion infected! The man knew what he was talking about, so I'd choose the safe option by using the software that bears his name.

James Dyson told everyone his hoovers were the mutts nuts, it didn't take folk too long to realise he sells overpriced crap that can't compete with hardware half it's price.

As far as MicroAngelo goes, I didn't get it the first time - and NOD32 has worked for me without any issues to date...and without kicking the crap out of my system resources either.

RussJK

I probably should have saved this thread until today, that way less people would have actually believed me. Here I was thinking that most people would understand that I was unlikely to be hit repeatedly by the most famously over-hyped virus of all time... (one that maybe 20,000 computers were ever affected by.)

free4440273

nope/ no infections here / :cool:

Alias_Omega

Both computers clean, and always have been.

If i was infected, i would simply restore the computer through the disks that were created, and away i go. Possibly 2-3hrs max downtime...

I use AVG, & dont goto dodgy websites