The Ultimate Virus Killer - ST Club œ9.95
             Reviewed by James Judge on an STe

Just imagine this - you've got a load of disks that you regularly
save to, so you must keep them write enabled, and on them are
important files (for your business etc).

You have a few pounds left from the month's budget so you decide
to buy a PD game. You receive the game and love it so you play it
quite a bit in between times.  After a while you start getting
messages from your computer that it can't find a file that you
have asked for, and the files it can't find are those important
ones I mentioned before.

What has happened? You've contracted a virus from the PD game.
Not a bad one, but it will be able to destroy files on your
floppies and hard drive.

What should you do? Call in the Ultimate Virus Killer (UVK).

UVK is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive and versatile virus
killer out at the moment.  It can search and destroy nearly all of
the most common viruses that will lurk in the most shady systems
as well as some of the spectacular ones.

Viruses can come in many forms from printing a small message on
the screen to slowing down your computer. These evil beasties
reside in the boot sectors of disks. The boot sectors, as the name
suggests, are what your computer reads first on booting up and
these tell it if it should be running a particular program, what
resolution to boot up in and other such things. If the computer
comes across a virus it will activate it and the virus will lay
dormant in the computer's memory until certain specifications have
been met eg: it has copied itself fifty times then it will run
itself.

The virus killer (UVK in this case) will read the boot sector of a
disk and tell you if it suspects that there is a virus there. UVK
will try and name the virus, if it finds one, and then give you

the option of killing it or leaving it alone (not a very good idea
as most viruses copy themselves at every opportunity they can).

Boot sectors that don't have a virus can also be recognised by
UVK. If it is an IBM compatible disk UVK will tell you so. If it
has been immunised UVK will tell you it has and what method was
used to immunised it.

UVK also recognises some games.  The trouble with games and
viruses is that the small program that starts a game off is kept
in the disk's boot sector with any viruses.  So this means that
other 'lesser' virus killers will also make the game unplayable by
destroying the boot sector. UVK will tell you what the game is, if
it recognises it, (eg "Blades, Lords Of Chaos") or, if it does not
recognise the boot sector, it will give you a percentage chance of
the boot sector containing a virus.  The higher the percentage the
lower the chance of it being a virus.

Another added bonus with UVK is that if you've destroyed the boot
sector of a game's disk it will try and repair the damage. It
recognises hundreds of games and demos so you shouldn't have much
difficulty in finding the game you've done in.

UVK is run by a simple menu system which allows you to access all
of its functions by either the mouse or the keyboard.

At the beginning of the program it asks you for the date and time,
which it displays throughout the program, and it will then tell
you whose birthday the virus killing will be on (ie on the 17th of
May, my birthday, virus killing will take place on Enya's birthday
also) which is a nice touch.

There is also an information screen at the beginning that gives
you a run down about your system's set up and if there is a virus
in the keyboard processor (a nasty thing that mucks up anything
you do with the keyboard).

When you quit the program it tells you how many disks it has
checked, how many viruses found and destroyed etc.

Also on the disk is a text file listing all the common viruses
with technical info and notes about what they do and their
history.

Everyone should have a virus killer no matter what it is but if
they want one that can do the job better than no other this is the
one for them.

WAYS TO KEEP YOUR SYSTEM VIRUS-FREE

(1) Get UVK

(2) Write protect any disks you don't write to (so you can see
through the hole in the top right of the disk).

(3) Check any disks you get with a virus killer, whether they be
from a trusted friend or a trusted PD library like SynTax.

(4) Immunize as many disks as possible with UVK's 'new' method of
immunization.

(5) Check your most used disk regularly as well as your hard disk
and keyboard processor.

(6) If you own Deuteros by Activision DON'T boot with the data
disk as early versions contain the Signum BPL virus A, the most
common virus around.