Ibm pc at parity check

[jacobtohahn]

But the POST does not break its RAM count-up figures into base and expansion; it just has the one count.
Or are you making an assumption ?

It does not. However, I am using the AMI BIOS, which shows the system stats both in the setup menu and right when it first boots up. It splits it into expansion and base.

 

[diskettenfett]

Ah, and another thing I just remembered: If you know the normal sound your machine makes while booting, you could tell whether it was infected with ParityBoot or not. Back then, I had an IBM PS/2 machine (386). Normally on power up, after the RAM test ended, it seek-tested the floppy once ("brrrrt"), beeped (POST OK), then tried to boot from the floppy ("brrt") and finally booted from the HD. When the machine was infected, you got two identical drive seek sounds instead of one after the POST beep (ParityBoot becoming active, searching for a floppy to infect). Funny, whenever I heard those two seek sounds instead of one, I knew it was time to get the F-PROT boot disk out again, do an FDISK /MBR and scan my floppies... . Let me know if you find an ParityBoot infection on this machine, I'd be very surprised if the cause for these errors is something else.

 

[modem7]

I wonder if the 'Incompetent' virus ever existed:

By your incompetent actions, I, the computer, have now deduced that the probability of you accidentally damaging the operating system or data is high.
Shutting myself down ...

 

[jacobtohahn]

Ah, and another thing I just remembered: If you know the normal sound your machine makes while booting, you could tell whether it was infected with ParityBoot or not. Back then, I had an IBM PS/2 machine (386). Normally on power up, after the RAM test ended, it seek-tested the floppy once ("brrrrt"), beeped (POST OK), then tried to boot from the floppy ("brrt") and finally booted from the HD. When the machine was infected, you got two identical drive seek sounds instead of one after the POST beep (ParityBoot becoming active, searching for a floppy to infect). Funny, whenever I heard those two seek sounds instead of one, I knew it was time to get the F-PROT boot disk out again, do an FDISK /MBR and scan my floppies... . Let me know if you find an ParityBoot infection on this machine, I'd be very surprised if the cause for these errors is something else.

Thanks for the info! I’m away from home for the weekend, but I think I do recall two searches instead of one. I’ll disinfect when I get home, and I also have a video on another device of the startup (that I was going to share with a friend) that I can check tomorrow to see if it does search twice. Thanks for all the info, you saved me hours!

 

[jacobtohahn]

Turns out that Parity Boot was in fact the issue. I’ll try to disinfect it.

 

[ibm51x0]

This is a virus (Parity Boot) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parity_Boot (in German) It's a German virus

 

[MasawVx]

this is almost 6 years late lol. but anybody has some issues with dos viruses can try and use my portable antivirus to check for common boot and file viruses from the 80's and 90's. it can identify and disinfect 99% of all Parity Boot variants, it can even disable it in memory it its active.
Just a couple of days ago a user from another forum suspected that he had a virus in his old IBM PS/2 and sure he did had Junkie virus and was able to remove it using my AV. mind you that this runs only on at least a 80286 CPU

 

[modem7]

this is almost 6 years late lol. but anybody has some issues with dos viruses can try and use my portable antivirus to check for common boot and file viruses from the 80's and 90's. it can identify and disinfect 99% of all Parity Boot variants, it can even disable it in memory it its active.

I have seen you advertise this before. I will add it to the list at [here], noting the requirement for an 80286 or better.

BTW. Is there a reason why it is still in 'beta' ?

 

[MasawVx]

oh sweeet thank you for the inclusion. now regarding to why it is still in Beta, there are couple of reasons, but 2 of the major reasons are (1) had tons of features that I wanted to incorporate into it before I make a final release, like the addition of Polymorphic virus detection engine. although it can detect light and moderate polymorphic viruses such Manzon, WereWolf, Tequila, Flip, to name a few, they are are identified and can be removed with exception for Tequila, which has no file disinfector yet. NATAS.mp and ONE-HALF.mp polymorphic viruses, however, are detected and disabled in memory and MBR, but not in files, since they are highly polymorphic in nature. (2) needed to make proper documentation, like a user manual etc if I decided to release it "officially". as to why it only runs on 286+ cpu, technically it will run on 80186 (also V20 or V30) since 80286 introduced protected mode instructions only since 8018X. I noticed when I opted 286 in the C compiler it produces a rather small code than otherwise. the idea was to make it as portable as possible , single .EXE file capable of handling 200+ viruses rather than split data into separate files..