.. first step might be to read about it - maybe you don't even need one ; ) I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Steve, If you'd said from the beginning that it needed command.com, we wouldn't have gone through all this. 2. If the company's problem is boot sector viruses, fix that.

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Well sometimes fixing a problem is not as easy as just saying "fix it". My company has hundreds of FSR's (field service representitives/technicians) who have literally thousands of used floppies in their vans, spread out over almost every state and 4 foreign countries. There are ten's of thousand's of our emissions analyzers out there that potentially could be infected with either the NYB or STEALTHBOOTB boot viruses. They spread quicker than we can get notifications out to the offending technicians/machines. So fixing the problem is a big mountain to climb. Eliminating it from spreading by using CD's instead of floppy's is just a small step in the right direction.

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And you are a technician as well? I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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JBOY, I'm sorry that I never responded to my other postings. Your right, I probably should have included something in return. However if I don't read something that helps me, then I don't really have much to respond to. Sometimes it just seems these days that so many forum responses had poor attitudes connected with them. Picking apart how I word my question instead of generally addressing what I ask. I just don't want to get in a pissing contest with people because I didn't word my post perfectly or I'm not as knowledgable as others are. I made my first response in this posting because I felt I had received some valuable information from mechanix2go, and in response I get this: 'If you'd said from the beginning that it needed command.com, we wouldn't have gone through all this.' If I was familiar enough with my problem that I knew the cause I wouldn't have needed to post a question to begin with. I post as much information as I feel relevant, then, based on the responses of others, I either post more information, or I get enough input to work the problem out myself. Sometimes things take a few posts to work through. I'm not trying to ruffle anybody's feathers. After reading through some old posts here it seemed like a good knowledge base to post in, that's why I decided to post.

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Well, as far as that goes, it's more a matter of courtesy. When you ask perfect strangers for assistance, it's like, customary. Also covered in 'terms & rules' (which is accessible when posting) With regard to this problem - sure, reporting any error messages *exactly* goes a long way to helping us determine the difficulty. I was merely curious as to your role in this security project - previous posts seem to indicate your technical background is, well, uneven. All the best - hope you found what you needed. I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Well my programming background is way uneven...hence why I have posted questions here that may have not sounded very knowledgeable. I started life as a mechanic, moved on to an electrical assembly job and I am now repairing electronics (computers/PCB's) I've just started trying to program on a DOS level because of the above mentioned problem(s). Our equipment is sooooooo old. (runs mostly DOS and OS/2 based programs!) I've taken some java programming classes but that doesn't help me at all in this lower level programming. So yes, I am a technician, in my company's repair facility, not out in the field where these virus issues are in full swing. And so everyone who responded to my post receives some input as to how I solved my problem, I wound up using ROXIE software to create a bootable CD from my bootable floppy disk. From the CD I transfered all my info to my RAMDRIVE and everything worked wonderfully. The 'computerhope.com' link that jboy posted was where I originally learned about what a RAMDRIVE or RAMDISK is. To make mine I included a Device=himem.sys Device=ramdrive.sys 8192 /E in my config.sys file. THe 8192 specifies the size of the drive (around 8MB for this one) and the /E is a switch that is used to make the RAMDRIVE in either the PC's expanded memory or extended memory. Anyone can access a list of the RAMDRIVE switches at this link: http://2dos.homepage.dk/batutil/help/RAMDRI_S.HTM Thanks to everyone who posted a response.

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I am not 100% sure here - But CD-ROMs particularly the CD/R-CD/RW variety can also be infected with viruses. If the Computer that writes them is checked and clean, then so will the CD being written - If you use an infected bootdisk then a bootable CD will be also... However if it is re-writable can it then be infected? Not sure about this bit... PowerLoad is part of the Oldfiles Network Please reply with a message to let us all know we are on the right track...

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I suppose a CD can be infected from a bad floppy. Whether the virus will spread from an infected CD as it would spread from a floppy is another question I suppose. If a virus is written to copy itself from the floppy to the harddrive boot sector, then in turn to every un-infected floppy installed thereafter,(like the viruses I am dealing with) it might work differently off a CD. I'm using a CD-R which can only be written to once. My bootable floppy is clean (check it quite often) so I don't think infecting the CD will be an issue. I am writing all my code on a clean machine connected to my company's network which has security/virus checking like you couldn't believe!

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just adding my two cents worth... fdisk checks command.com to make sure it's the same dos version, then, as mentioned above, makes a call to command.com again when it ends. But, I believe it will ALWAYS make that call to the command.com the machine is booted up from... meaning, you can't redirect it after bootup to use another copy of command.com the simple solution here, instead of ramdisk, etc, is simply to buy brand new floppies (you say you're on a clean machine now), make clean floppy boot disks, then break out the write protection slider. No virus can write to a floppy that is write-protected (break it out so it can't be slide back to 'write' mode). If you *have* to have the bootup cd's, the best way to go about it is to create an image file on a clean machine... then, that can be used to burn clean boot cd's even on an infected machine Good luck!

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"meaning, you can't redirect it after bootup to use another copy of command.com" Sure you can - that's exactly what SET COMSPEC does. I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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When you made your bootable cd, you most likely used a bootable floppy as the boot files ~image~ source. Do it again but this time use the set comspec command in the a:\autoexec.bat to redirect to E:command.com before you create the cd.

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