Eudora status indicator problem.
ABC
Eudora in.mbx because it has virus emails in it. Eudora became useless
with a blank "In" box.
As instructed by Symantec, I restored the in.mbx from quanrantine.
Eudora now opens but all the emails are marked with a question mark in
the status indicator(where I used to have a blue dot for unread
emails).
How can I change the question mark to "read" or a blue dot again? BTW,
is there a way to delete just the infected emails without destroying
the IN box?
Thanks
ABC
John H Meyers
> So I let Symantec antivirus scan my C drive,
> and it quanrantined my Eudora in.mbx
> because it has virus emails in it.
> Eudora became useless with a blank "In" box.
That's one way to reduce a too-full "In" mailbox :)
It also highlights one of the reasons why it's good
to make it a policy to transfer incoming mail
from "In" to other mailboxes, as soon as practicable
(similarly for one's "Out" mailbox, which also
should not be allowed to grow too large).
> As instructed by Symantec, I restored the in.mbx
> from quarantine. Eudora now opens, but all the emails
> are marked with a question mark in the status indicator
> (where I used to have a blue dot for unread emails).
> How can I change the question mark to "read" or a blue dot again?
When your "In.mbx" file was quarantined, it became "detached"
from being synchronized with its "table of contents" file (In.toc),
which, if modified or regenerated while the original mailbox
sat in quarantine, no longer matches the original mailbox contents.
If you have not already done so, then rename or delete file "In.toc"
and allow Eudora to "re-index" the mailbox.
Re-indexing loses the original "status" indicators,
as well as any modified "Subject" etc. in the message summaries
(the "summaries" are all displayed from file "In.toc").
You should also then be able to select any or all messages,
and change their status to whatever you want.
> BTW, is there a way to delete just the infected emails
> without destroying the IN box?
You could tell the anti-virus program not to scan within that folder
(or turn it off entirely); then you can perform any desired operations,
such as deleting individual messages, after which you should also
"compact" the mailbox by clicking the short bar where the message counts
appear, in the lower left corner of the summary window, or by doing
a "compact [all] mailboxes" in the "Special" menu.
"Compacting" is necessary, because the original messages are not
actually deleted from the mailbox file when first "marked" as deleted
(only the ".toc" file is at first altered, to simply keep track
of which messages to ignore, until the rebuilding of both files
during a subsequent "compact").
If course, you need to figure out which of your messages
is/are the offenders; if you don't know, then you may have a lot
of "trial and error" or "divide and conquer" to experiment with.
--
ABC
<jhme...@nomail.invalid> wrotd:
>If course, you need to figure out which of your messages
>is/are the offenders; if you don't know, then you may have a lot
>of "trial and error" or "divide and conquer" to experiment with.
Thanks very much for the help. Now this is the hard part. How can I
tell which are the infected emails if I cannot use the antivirus
scanner to scan in.mbx?
ABC
John H Meyers
JHM:
>> If course, you need to figure out which of your messages
>> is/are the offenders; if you don't know, then you may have a lot
>> of "trial and error" or "divide and conquer" to experiment with.
ABC:
> Thanks very much for the help. Now this is the hard part.
> How can I tell which are the infected emails
> if I cannot use the antivirus scanner to scan in.mbx?
"trial and error" or "divide and conquer" :)
For example, copy half of emails to new mailbox "xyz"
Then copy file "xyz.mbx" to an area of hard disk
where newly created files are still being checked for viruses
(assuming that you have turned AV off only within your mail data folder,
not for your entire hard disk), or perhaps copy them to one specific
temporary folder, then ask the AV program to check that entire folder.
Or, split up and copy to many new mailboxes (xyz1, xyz2, etc.)
then test all of those by copying to where AV will check them.
Files which pass AV checking are probably fine;
when you've isolated the bad from the good,
recombine all the "good" into one mailbox
(not back to "In" -- save somewhere else).
It seems to me that for a long while, modern versions of Eudora
have been storing each incoming message elsewhere, before appending
to "In.mbx," specifically to head off this problem, so that
the entire "In.mbx" is less likely to be quarantined as a whole,
given that each incoming message has been pre-checked.
Arrival of brand new virus definitions can change the results, however,
as can any "false positives"
It is most likely, even when this does occur,
that it is triggered by mail that has only recently arrived,
since old mail does not usually sprout new viruses.
--
If the leading ">" is removed from the line below,
the remaining 68 characters, if stored into the beginning of any file,
say "xyz.txt", should be detected as a "virus" by any AV scanner;
for explanation, see http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm
> X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
> ----+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4----+----5----+----6----+---
Dillon Pyron
You can, as suggested, migrate your inbox contents to separate
mailboxes based on some criteria. Then scan each of them. It could,
possibly, be a false positive. I know, I know, virus scanners never
have false positives, they're that good.
I'm putting a tooth under my pillow tonight. I'm also asking Santa
for a new laptop with Vista, since that's the perfect OS.
>
>ABC
--
dillon
Elvis is still dead