Yesterday and today, when I opened my email program, I got messages that one of the mailboxes had a corrupted index. I can’t recall the last time I had a corrupted index, but it’s been at least 4 or 5 years (and not on this PC, or under XP). I haven’t seen evidence of any other problems.
I use Eudora Pro v. 3.0.3 yes, it’s an antique, but it does the job
(and I can’t justify paying $50 for the latest & greatest).
Other data:
eMachines T2825 (PC Mag editor’s choice the month before I bought it)
XP sans the update
Netscape 7.1
Norton Internet Security 2004, running everything but Anti-Spam (I prefer MailWasher) & checked for upgrades today
AdAware SE checked for upgrades yesterday
Spybot S&D checked for upgrades Monday
ran all three in the last 24 hours, and ran Norton AV & AdAware again today
I had downloaded Spyware Blaster, but have never installed it. :o I’ll do that no later than tomorrow.
Now, can anyone tell me whether there’s anything else I should do??
Why do you think this is malware? Is it possible that the index really is corrupt? Does Eudora have a tool for repairing corrupt mail files, similiar to the Inbox Repair Tool for Outlook?
Because yesterday was the first time it’s happened in about 5 years.
I assume it is correct, as it reported it when I opened the program, both days.
Yes, it does have a repair applet. It asks whether to repair or use the old one, when it reports the event.
Thanks, but why? AFAIK, nobody attacks Eudora, but attacks on Netscape/Mozilla do happen. You did notice that I don’t use Netscape’s email, didn’t you?? Why would I go from Eudora (antique version or not) to something with a higher profile? I’m happy enough with what I’ve got. I hardly ever change software unless I can perceive a good reason for it.
If something’s attacking it, I want to know. Who knows what else it’s going after, and Eudora’s an accidental victim. If it’s something else, I need to know that, too. In the latter case, it’s probably the OS, or maybe something totally weird with NIS. <sigh> But I don’t want to think about that unless/until I hafta.
From my experience, I would say it is more likely to be an impending hardware failure (hard drive or RAM) or an OS issue than malware. You are pretty well protected with the software you have loaded and up-to-date.
Another possibilty is a particular email that is causing the corruption. Are there any messages with weird data in the subject or other fields. Sometimes a program will choke if it encounters unexpected values in those fields.
If AdAware and Spybot both come up clean, run HijackThis and post the log here. If that is clean as well, I would say it is not malware, just an unfortunate malfunction.
