Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ThisCharmingMan]

On the first black screen with the "Energy" imprint when starting XP, I get this I text: "Trend ChipAwayVirus(R) on Guard 1.65".What the heck is this?Did I pick this up on a p2p download?So far everything works as before.Should I be worried?I never saw this before.Worried

[Demophobe]

Yes, you probably have a virus or something changed in the BIOS...did you go in there at all? There is a stting in the BIOS to protect the core system from viruses...this can be disabled, but I don't think you want to do that.

You use AV? A good one? You need to do a full system scan.

I will research this a bit and get back to you.

[ThisCharmingMan]

A full system scan?Well, I scaned both paritions of my hard drive and found nothing and I didn't go into a BIOS.

While extracting a p2p file, my computer crashed and on the reboot I first noticed it.

[Demophobe]

Found this...may help.

"Question:when I start up my computer as it is scaning everything I receive a highlited sentence that says
"Trend-chipaway virus[R] on Guard Ver1.63A
Then at the bottom of the page I get another sentence that is highlited that says press F1 to continue and I do and everything continues on as normal. What is this virus alert about and how do I eliminate it? Thanks for any help.
John

Answer: Trend-Chipaway is antivirus "protection" built into the system BIOS. This can trigger false virus alerts when it doesn't recognise the operating system that you have installed.

It can be disabled by going into the BIOS. Next locate the Virus Scanning feature. For machines with AMI BIOS, this is under the Advanced menu heading. For machines with Award BIOS, check the Anti Virus Protection heading.

Locate Trend ChipAway Virus or Anti-virus option and change or toggle its setting to Disable.

Without making any further configuration changes, save the new settings and restart the computer.

Finally, to properly protect your system from viruses, make sure that you have a good antivirus program installed on your computer and that you keep the signature files up to date."

Personally, I don't like turning something like this off, especially when it just popped up suddenly, without having made any drastic changes to the setup.

Did you do anything to trigger this? What were you doing, or what did you run just before this happened?

[Bulsajo]

It appears to be an anti-virus program loaded from the BIOS/CMOS... have you entered set up and changed any settings recently?

Trend ChipAway on Guard:
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/about/news/pr/archive/1998/pr050698.htm

Some guy with the same 'problem':
http://www.techimo.com/forum/t112764.html

I'm not sure I'd freak out too badly about it yet at the same time you'll definitely want to investigate how/why your BIOS has suddenly started running this program [especially if you haven't updated your BIOS recently nor changed any of your set up settings].

[Demophobe]

Ok...well, something exrtracted in the .zip archive made the BIOS detect boot sector damage or change. You probably got a virus that changed the boot sector.

The computer is acting normally? Well, if you get nothing on a system scan, and the computer is acting well, then I guess don't worry too much...

Delete the file and the extracted file, perhaps do an online AV scan.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

http://www.kaspersky.com/remoteviruschk.html

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp?cid=9914 (this doesn't clean, just informs)

[ThisCharmingMan]

Couldn't do an online AV scan due to idiosyncracies in the programs themselves:single file scans, only C drive scan, "page not found", but I'm going to trust my McAfee VirusScan program-"nothing found".

I already deleted the compressed file, but on the reboot, I extracted all files without a hitch.I'm not going to delete the files even though prudence tells me otherwise(the extracted files were clean from any viruses).

I'm going to keep the VirusGuard in the BIOS running since nothing has changed in performance.

I'm still without a clue as to why this had been enabled, but I'll keep anybody interested up-to-date if the apocalypse really does bid.

*Could the RIAA be implanting viruses in files now?

[Demophobe]

[ThisCharmingMan]

Got it.Did a Housecall scan and nothing again.Keep my fingers crossed.

Wondering though, if I were to do a clean install if something major happens, would the VirusGuard be still enabled so I would have to disenable it maually if I were to do so or would the BIOS reset to default?

[Demophobe]

No, it would still be enabled. The BIOS operates first outside...before, actually, of the OS, then it's the link between your hardware and the OS.

The BIOS is what you see when you turn on your PC (the black with white fonts)...just for a moment it loads, then you don't see it anymore...it stands for "Basic Input Output System...it's the core software that communicates with your hardware.

It is accessed by hitting the "Del" key on the initial boot screen. Re-installing windows doesn't change the BIOS at all.

Personally, I would just leave it enabled..probably the default. At least this time, it seems to have warned you.

Reading more about it, apparently some other non-virus related things can set it off, such as a major Win update, like installing SP1. If the virus protection in the BIOS doesn't recognize something that changed, even a legit change, it's sends the warning.

If the PC is ok, then no worries.

[Dalton]

I think it's just a message or logo page to tell you that the antivirus is enabled. It's a message on boot up like what bios or video card you have. That's all.

I've had three motherboards with Trend Micro pc-cillin antivirus available to install from the motherboard cd. Chip away is just their bios antivirus product.

I don't think you have any problems at all. It's just a message. You only need to disable it when you install some video drivers-like NVidia.

Pc-cillin is probably on your MB setup disc too. But if you install Zone Alarm (which you should) then install Zone Alarm first. It will want PC-Cillin uninstalled before it will install. Then install PC-Cillin. It will ask you to disable the PC-Cillin firewall since it has compatability problems with the Zone Alarm firewall. No problems there since Zone Alarm has more functions and likely works better.

[Gollum]

Dude, if I'm reading what you wrote correctly, that's just a start-up screen telling you that the on-chip virus-checking software is working.

I used to get the same thing on a different computer from Day 1.

Its Trend Micro (same as housecall), I believe.

Funny it didn't show up before. Did you or someone else enable it in bios accidentally? Or maybe the accompanying software auto-updated itself online, and as part of the update, they decided to put in some kind of text on your startup... likely it just got enabled as part of boot though.

[Bulsajo]

[Hollywoodaction]

You probably see it now because you didn't shut off your computer correctly, so it reverted to the default settings.