I got hit by the W32.Elkern.4926 yesterday afternoon. I was checking my mail between classes and deleting all the junk, as usual. On a bad day, I get up to 10 infected messages a day, but I always have Norton AntiVirus running so I wasn’t worried. As I deleted what was obviously a virus (NOT opening any attachments, thank you, I know that), my hard drive suddenly started getting really busy. Then programs in the taskbar started disappearing. It was terrifying. I put the computer to sleep because students started coming in, and as I taught the class, I kept trying to tell myself I didn’t have a virus even though I knew it had to be. To make a long story short, I went over to my cousin’s house after I got home from work and we stayed up all night backing things up and then fixing things.

Call me silly, but I really enjoyed playing around with DOS. Black screen. White letters. All those commands. Ken showed me what he knew about DOS. It was almost worth all the trouble with the virus. LOL.

It seems I had the great honor (oh, yay) of being one of the first people to be hit with that particular flavour of the virus. Norton didn’t have any fixes available until more than 24 hours after I was infected.
225 infected files
223 repaired
2 in quarantine (which I deleted)

The virus should be all gone now, but I can’t get the system to work properly. I’m using Win2K. I’ll probably stay up all night tonight, too. I’m in a serious love-hate relationship with my two computers. But computers are still easier to get along with than most people … aren’t they?

Update
Formatting C:

Update No. 2
Windows up and running now after a nice, clean fdisk. Forgot floppy and CD-ROMS with vital drivers at Ken’s house. Can’t do anything more tonight. Splitting headache.

All Fixed
My computer is all fixed up: hard disk wiped, Win2K installed, all drivers installed, all software installed, all preferences and options customized for the various softwares, etc., etc.

Yay!