PCUGR Shareware SIG -
January 27, 2001
Rawls Frazier,
Facilitator
rfrazier
First
meeting of the new year (heck, new millennium!). Nine of us
got together at RE/MAX Marina in Petaluma to start the year
off.
F-Prot version 3.08b
This
is the latest version of the DOS F-Prot anti-virus software.
We went through an extensive review of how to make effective
use of the program. A caveat up front: if you already use
another anti-virus program such as Norton Anti-Virus, be sure
to disable it 1st before using F-Prot so you avoid any
"collision" between the two. With that in mind,
here's what we covered.
1. Minimum
required files from the distribution to operate:
F-Prot.exe
English.tx0
Scan.def
Scan2.def
Macro.def
2. Useful
files to have with the program:
Command.txt
Scan.txt
Updates.txt
F-prot.ico |
(a
list of command line parameters)
(general instructions)
(where to find updates)
F-Prot icon for shortcuts, etc. |
3. It is
useful to have a custom shortcut to the program that allows
you to specify a command line parameter or a specific file to
scan. One way to do that is, in the folder where the program
files are located, right click and drag to a new place in the
same folder. Choose "Create Shortcut(s) Here" in
the menu that pops up when the right mouse button is
released. Rename the shortcut to suit your fancy.
Next, right
click the shortcut and select Properties at the bottom of the
menu that pops up. Click the Program tab on the dialog box
that appears and add a space and a ? character at the end of
the line called "Cmd_line:". It will look something
like this:
When the
shortcut is double clicked, an input box will pop up for any
additional parameters and/or a filename to scan (enter the
complete path). It is OK to leave the input box blank.
It is also
handy to copy this shortcut to the desktop.
4. Another
very useful way to use the program is via the "Send
To" menu choice when a file is right clicked. When doing
this, it is also nice to have the program automatically scan
into compressed archives (e.g., .zip files), so we created a
batch file called FPROT.BAT and put the following lines in
it:
@echo off
c:\fprot\f-prot.exe /archive /packed /list %1
Next, the
batch file was right click-dragged over to the Windows\Send
To folder to create a shortcut to it and the shortcut renamed
to F-PROT so it would look better on the Send To menu.
To use this,
just pick a file (or folder - it will look at all the files
in the folder), right click, scroll down to the Send To line
and then pick F-PROT on the menu. Voila, the file will be
scanned.
5. The last
item we discussed was creating a set of clean diskettes with
the F-Prot files for use scanning the system when an
infection is suspected. To do this, two diskettes need to be
prepared as follows:
| Disk
1. |
|
| |
F-prot.exe
English.tx0
Scan.def |
| Disk
2. |
|
| |
Scan2.def
Macro.def |
Once made,
the disks should be write-protected. (The files could also be
placed on a ZIP disk or a CD as well.)
If a virus
infection is suspected, the following protocol was suggested.
- Power
down and boot from a write-protected Startup disk.
(If a ZIP disk or CD is going to be used, the
appropriate drivers need to be loaded as well.)
- Insert
Disk 1 and, at the DOS prompt, enter
f-prot
/loaddef
- Insert Disk 2 when the
program prompts for SIGN2.DEF.
- Scan
the system as needed. (Ignore the message about the
.INI file when the program is exited - this occurs
because the floppies are write-protected.
That
concluded our review of F-Prot.
Freeware
(for personal use) from Frisk Software International.
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/virus/
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/virus/
We turned
our attention to backing up next, particularly to CD-R/RW
drives. It would have been nice to find a good freeware
solution, but it turned out this time that you pretty much
got what you paid for. One limitation of all the programs
looked at (and, it seems, in general for these types programs
available for download) is that they do not have any sort of
disaster recovery feature. What this means is that, in the
event of a disaster like completely losing your hard drive,
you must first re-install Windows, then reinstall the program
and, finally restore your system from your backup.
FallBack
This program is "mailware" (it's free to use, but
the author would like an email telling him you are using it).
Backups are made to standard ZIP archives. In fact, the
program is actually a specialized front end (and a nice
looking one) for PKWare's PKZip 2.50c, a 32 bit command line
archiver. That software is included with FallBack, but it is
not free - it is $39 shareware. A hidden charge.
In checking
out the program, an attempt was made to backup to a CD-RW
over a network, but the operation didn't succeed and didn't
issue any sort of error. A similar attempt to a network hard
disk also didn't work. Too bad.
A normal
backup to a local hard drive worked OK although it seemed a
little slow. A test restore from this backup work fine and
was fairly quick. Disk spanning is supported but a test was
not done. Given that PKZip is what's really doing the backup,
it is expected to work OK.
A number of
niceties were missing: a count of files being backed up, an
estimate of the backup size, estimated time to backup;
estimated compression, etc. Also, there was no
"cancel" feature in case you wanted to abort a
backup. However, you could exit FallBack while PKZip was
still running in the background. That's not necessarily good.
http://arkban.hypermart.net/fallback/index.html
My Own Backup
This is a cute, freeware backup program from Taz-Soft in
Sweden. It, too, uses the ZIP archive format for its backup
sets. In this case, it uses the freeware Delzip package to
achieve that functionality. Installation does not dump files
all over the place. Instead, one just puts the program files
into a folder. From there, just launch the main program and
you are good to go. To uninstall, just dump the folder. And
the program file set is fairly small. They just about fit on
a floppy.
In use a
normal backup works fine and is reasonably fast. There is no
estimate of the backup set size or time, but once backup
starts this information is displayed and there is a cancel
button to abort the backup if need be. The program cannot be
used to either backup network drives or backup to a network
drive. Local devices only.
Restore
worked fine, although there was a bug in the restore location
browse button. If you wanted to restore to a location
different from where the files originally came from, you had
to manually enter it. Otherwise, it worked OK.
A test
backup was made to a CD-RW. The program does not directly
"master" a CD. Instead, the CD must setup for
packet writing with software such as Adaptec's Direct CD. The
test backup set was larger than 1 CD-RW and correctly
determined when a disk was full, prompting for the next disk
in the set. The backup speed was pretty good, too. About 30
min to do 600 MB. Unfortunately, My Own Backup was not able
detect the disk change when trying a restore and got stuck in
a loop continually asking for the disk with the file. The
program had to be killed via the taskmanager. It is not
entirely clear whether the fault lay with My Own Backup or
with Direct CD, but it is something to watch out for. Since
the backup was a ZIP archive, one could presumably do
restores with a zip manager such as WinZip.
http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-42000/MOB/
Backup to
CD-RW
The full name for this program is "Backup to CD-RW (Made
Simple)", but the program name is just WillowBackup.exe.
It has a nice interface that leads you through the backup
process. Unfortunately, there is, again, no support for
network drives. It will calcuate the size of the backup and
the number of CD-RW disks needed. A test backup/restore of
local files worked fine although if you want to restore to a
location other than where the file originally came from, you
have to enter it manually (no browse button.)
The program
is $16 shareware. There is a nag screen, but otherwise is
fully functional.
http://www.willowsoft.com/backup/index.html
Intelli-Bak
This shareware backup program does a reasonable job although
selecting which files to backup was a bit tedious compared to
other programs looked at. A plus was support for backing up
across a network via a "mapped" drive (UNC names
were not supported). Backup to a CD-R/RW device is supported
as long as the CD is formatted for packet writing.
A test
backup set greater than one CD-RW in size was done and worked
fine, prompting for a new disk when the current one was full.
Backup speed was OK, too, taking about 30 min to do 700 MB
without compression. Restoring a file from the CD-RW backup
set also worked OK although it took awhile before the program
processed and displayed the files in the set.
$15 limited
time (30 days) shareware from Blackboard Software.
http://store.yahoo.com/bsoftware/intellibak.html
Disk2Disk
This backup program is the most useful and professional of
the lot. Unfortunately for the SIG, we ran out of time to
discuss it. To complete our theme, a description follows, but
we will probably take another look next time.
A nicely
laid out .PDF manual fully explains the program and use. In addition, the program displays "cue" cards to guide
use through all steps. To help automate backups, a schedule
program is included with the package. Selecting folders and
files for backup is straight forward using an Explorer like
tree display. In addition to individually excluding certain
files or folders, a global list of file types to exclude is
also available in the program. Numerous other options are
also available including a variety of compression levels,
verify after backup, backing up the registry and retrying
locked files at the end of the backup sweep. Backups to
packet formatted CD-R/RW discs is supported, including a
special flag to insure the software knows the media is
removable and a special packet "flushing" feature
to make for more efficient writing to the CD. Alternatively,
if the CD device doesn't support packet writing, the backups
can be divided into volumes, each of which can be sized to
fit on a CD and then subsequently burned on to CDs using the
regular mastering software that came with the the drive.
Restore features are similarly full featured. Backup sets are
stored in a proprietary format, so the program is required to
do restores.
A test
backup of > 700 MB to a CD-R/RW and a subsequent selective
restore of a few files across a network worked fine. Backup
speed was good, taking about 20 min to do 700 MB. One
apparent glitch was the verify after backup did not run but
in a 2nd, non-network backup, that feature worked as
expected. In either case, file comparisons of the restored
files to the originals revealed them to be identical. Another
nice touch is that the program lets you specify a new folder
for the restore destination and the program will create it on
the fly.
$19 time
limited (30 days) shareware from Duncan Amplification.
Before
closing up for the day, we took a quick look at a fun spot on
the web:
http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/
Take a look
for youself and have a laugh.
Next month
we'll catch up with a bunch of things Steve Cerruti brought.
And thanks again, to Bernie Stepan for the meeting room at
RE/MAX Marina, Petaluma and for the Internet connect.
