News Items

May 17, 2005 01:24AM

Good news for everyone out there that still runs Windows 98 or ME: AIMFix now runs correctly on Windows 98 and ME. It used to crash on those operating systems due to a difference in environment variables but I've come up with a solution to this so that it will run on any Windows OS from 98 onward.

Updated version is now available and also includes another dozen or so virus definition updates.

-Jay

May 16, 2005 09:28AM

Not too surprisingly, doing things while I was tired didn't work out too welll. I managed to screw up the contact form last night, so I apologize to anyone who tried to contact me last night from about 3am to 9:30 this morning when I woke up. It's working again now, if you sent anything last night I suggest sending it again if you didn't get a reply from me. I apologize again, but this sort of thing happens occasionally when you stay up till 3am working on problems, they all start to blur together and it's easy to make mistakes.

-Jay

May 16, 2005 03:36AM

About ten updates to AIMFix today; new variants of the Gabba-A /"Check THIS out" etc virus. There was quite a few variants floating around. More annoying, I found a couple bugs in the code for AIMFix that were entirely my fault. They prevented files on the desktop from being seen and removed properly by AIMFix, and a very specific set of registry keys from being removed. I'm struck again by how ready AIMFix is for another rewrite. If you have a problem with an AIMVirus, run the newest version and see if it helps remove components.

You know, I remember a time when I used to have time to answer each email carefully and personally. Now I get so many emails most of the time it's hard to even take the time to write out a paragraph or two. Of course, some of that comes from the fact that i get a couple dozen "I have a virus. fix it" emails for every one that actually includes a log file from HijackThis so I can actually help the person. There's nothing I hate more than being unable to help someone because I haven't got the information I need.

-Jay

May 13, 2005 06:40PM

Tired of the confusion caused because AIMFix couldn't always clean people's AIM profiles properly, I finally found a way to make sure the profile is erased for ALL accounts on the system. The updated AIMFix now no longer occasionally misfires on erasing the virus information from the buddy profile. If you ran an old AIMFix and it failed to clean your profile, I've uploaded a small tool that does nothing but clean the profile, called cleanProfile. Otherwise, anyone who uses AIMFix in the future will have their profile cleaned by AIMFix.

-Jay

May 13, 2005 10:12AM

Well, once again I'm having trouble sending mail to an AOL address. Kathy/wpskier, if you happen to read this (you never know) - I couldn't find a thing in the log file that would represent a virus. The best I can tell, the system is clean. It looks like I've been getting contacted by several people who think the virus is still on their system because the message is still in their profile. The profile message is removed by AIMFix most of the time, but in some cases it can get confused due to multiple AIM accounts, etc. and won't remove the message. If the profile text is the only reason you think you have an AIM virus, remember to manually remove it after you delete virus files with AIMFix.

AIMFix is updated as much as I can, but without HijackThis logs to look at from people who say it doesn't work for them, I can only guess what's wrong and I can't do much of anything. I don't like emailing people back just to tell them to try the new version of AIMFix, but I end up doing it anyway, because I have no information to work from. I will take a look at the profile message erasing stuff and see what I can do about making it work more consistently, so that people don't get confused by that. I've also posted a note on the contact page to remind people to try cleaning the link manually. To sum up: if the virus comes back again after you manually clean it, and AIMFix doesn't find any files, or if the message is IMed to all your buddies, then let me know, BUT send me a HijackThis log so I can actually help you. I hate not being able to help out, so it makes everyone happier when I have enough information to update AIMFix :)

-Jay