Nimda
A very infectious parasite called Nimda (admin backwards) has run rampant since my last column. For details of how it works, and links to anti-virus websites, see the Computer Emergency Response Team's page at www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-26.html.
Nimda or W32.Nimda. A@MM usually arrives in a blank email message as an attachment called readme. exe, though you may be invited to download it as an Outlook Express mail (.eml) file from an infected website. Obviously you should not run the file, but it may be executed if you simply show the message in the preview pane. (If it invites you to run it, hit Cancel until it stops.)
The patch for this vulnerability was published six months ago: see www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-020.asp for details.
Several companies provide free programs to remove the virus, including F-Secure (ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/fsnimda1.exe), McAfee and Sophos. Nimda activity may also be the cause of increased port scanning that readers with firewalls have noticed recently.
What file?
I receive attachments with a .pps suffix. When I try to open them, I get a message to say there is no association for this file. I do not know what I should associate this suffix with! Dawn Lewis
dclewis@dialstart.net
Jack Schofield replies: There are so many file extensions that no one knows what most of them mean. There is a web site at http://filext.com where you can look them up. In this case, it suggests that .pps is a Microsoft PowerPoint Slideshow file.
Flash Get
When downloading large files from the net, some time-out part way through. How can I deal with this? (Real Download has fixed this for some sites, but some of them reject it.) David J Leigh
d.j.leigh@staffs.ac.uk
JS: You need more download managers, and luckily there are at least 50 for Windows. My favourite is ReGet, but DAP and GetRight sometimes work when that fails to start, and vice versa. GetRight has a great browser tool. FlashGet, Net Vampire and others also have their fans. Most downloaders are free in advertising supported versions, or cost £10-30 without the ads. Mac download managers include Download Deputy, Monica, and ViaHTTP.
Get Flash
When I visit some websites, a box appears asking if I want to run Flash 5.0 distributed by Macromedia, Inc. Playing safe, I click No, but the box keeps re-appearing. How can I get rid of it? Geoff Fimister
gfimister@blueyonder.co.uk
JS: Flash used to be a program that let you flood another Unix user's terminal with garbage. Now it is a vector-based graphics animation system (it was originally called FutureSplash) that lets web designers flood your screen with garbage. Sadly, the best way to get rid of the box is to download and install the Flash module, then look for a "skip intro" button when you see an unwanted Flash download starting. There is no escape. Flash is so entrenched that Microsoft is including it with Windows XP.
To be fair, Flash is a good way of creating compact audiovisual files in very little time. See Jason Alan Basham's movie at http://totalescape.com/usa/imagine.html
Address saver
I run Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. How do I back up the address book? Kevin Gillespie
kandagill@btinternet.com
JS: Outlook Express uses the Windows Address Book so the data is held in a .wab file. You can find this by searching your C: drive for *.wab and back it up by copying it to another disk. You can also take a back up by exporting your addresses. Click the Addresses icon in Outlook Express to load the address book, then select File|Export| Address Book (WAB) and enter a name.
Unfortunately, in both cases the backup is not human-readable. A third option is therefore to select File|Export and choose Other Address Book, then Text File (Comma Separated Values). I do all three. It would be even better if someone provided a wizard to export a whole address book in standard vCard text format, but I don't know anyone who does. For information on vCards (virtual business cards), see www.imc.org/pdi/vcardoverview.html
Mail killer
I received an email from info@hignfy.com about Have I Got News For You's new series. When I try to read it, a message comes up saying an error has occurred, and I can click Ignore or Close. The box is headed MSIMN. If I click Ignore or try to delete the email, I am told I have Committed an Illegal Operation etc. Any suggestions? Brian Conlin
Brian@conlin31.freeserve.co.uk
JS: Look through the list of MSIMN errors at www.generation.net/~hleboeuf/ermsimn.htm and see if you can find one that applies. You may be able to delete the message by going to View|Layout in Outlook Express and turning off (unticking) Preview Pane. Another useful trick is to go to Edit|Find|Message to pop up a search box. Enter a search term that will find the message, and it will appear in a panel under the search box. There you can right-click it and delete it.
Write back
· Jack Gordon was looking for a better FTP (file transfer protocol) program for his Mac. Eight readers sent in suggestions; 75% recommended Transmit, which Ron Burns described as "the current Mac FTP application of choice". It costs $25 to register and can be downloaded from www.panic.com/transmit
· Tony Mitchell, editor of Skin Two, responded to Jason Hawkes' problem with transferring large picture files. What I did not mention, he says, "was how much time can be saved by first using the right file compression. Most people know that the standard JPEG file format is not suitable for quality repro of images above postcard size, and tend to assume TIFFs are the required standard. However, if you save your image file as an EPS in Photoshop, there is an Encoding sub-menu which allows you to save with varying degrees of JPEG compression. If you select "high quality" JPEG compression, you can reduce the EPS file to around a tenth of its original size with no perceivable loss of quality. That means A4 full-colour scans are compressed to around 3-4 megabytes with none of the limitations of a regular JPEG. We regularly send and receive files of this size as email attachments. We only need to bother with FTP for large multiple downloads."
