Alright, I have recently found out that I am the proud owner of a possible computer virus. My friend was holding some of my “Word” files for awhile and learned that they carried a “trojan horse” virus that eats up RAM. Before I just thought my computer sucked, but now I realize it’s because I ahve this thing eating my RAM. My question deals with the fact that I don’t know how to get rid of this virus. My Word files are very precious to me, and all the virus cleaners I know of quarantine virus areas so I can’t get to them. I don’t want this. I will deal with the misery as long as I can have these files. So is there another way out? Is there any way I can get this virus without also sacrificing the infected Word files?
Don’t throw away your files. DO, however, install an Antivirus software package on your computer, because I’m pretty sure that Word macro viruses infect the “normal.dot” file and other stuff that you don’t want to throw out.
Meanwhile, re: the sick infected files–
a) You can copy the contents to the clipboard, paste it into a text processor such as NotePad, then copy and paste it back into a new Word document. That only preserves the ASCII text though; you’ll lose all formatting.
b) Send it to me. I don’t have Word and therefore am immune to Word macro viruses, aside from which I’m on a Macintosh and PC viruses aren’t dangerous to us. I’ll convert it to MacWrite or WordPerfect, then back again to Word, then send it back to you. (The viruses get lost in the conversion process. So do any authentic macros, unfortunately.). If you want to take me up on this, my email address is listed in my profile.
c) Or if confidentiality is an issue, buy Conversions Plus from DataViz and do it yourself. You could end up needing it again some day, in addition to which you might some day want to be able to exchange files with someone whose word processor doesn’t happen to be Microsoft Word.
Any virus scanner will clean the infected Word files without harm. The few that quarantine only do that if they’re unable to clean the file, but Word macro viruses are simple to clean.
There’s a free one at http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_downl.cfm Just install it and scan your disk.
Not just any. I’ve noticed MacAfee has a disturbing habit of ignoring macro viruses.