Chklist.ms files? What are they?

[pluim j s]

Greg Margulies (gmar...@huey.csun.edu) wrote:

: Anyone know what the chklist.ms files are? I have one in almost
: every directory on my HD. What program put them there and can
: I delete them?

The .ms files contain checksums of your files. So if some nasty
virus thingy should sneak in and start a piggy-back ride on one
of your files, the antivirus program that created the .ms files
would be able to detect this since the size of the infected
file is now different from the value in the .ms file.
You can delete these files if you want to, however if you have
a virusscanner active it will probably start complaining and rebuild
the .ms files.

Baz.
pl...@nlr.nl

[John Pierlot]

Yes you can delete them if you want. They're created by your Microsoft
Anti-Virus program which you must have been running. MSAV will run
just fine without them, though you loose the monitoring-for-suspicious-
changes-to-executibles feature. Easiest way to delete them is to make
MSAV do it. I forget the exact steps, but if you run the program with
with pretty interface (just enter 'msav') you'll see the option readily
enough.

BTW, hope MSAV isn't your only anti-virus protection. That'd be like
safe-sex with a leaky condomn.

Regards,
John, s05...@aix1.uottawa.ca

[Heather A Thomas]

In article <3lvquj$9...@huey.csun.edu>, Greg Margulies wrote:
>Anyone know what the chklist.ms files are? I have one in almost
>every directory on my HD. What program put them there and can
>I delete them?

They are created and updated each time you run MicroSoft Anti-Virus (MSAV).
A very simple way to explain what they are is a "snapshot" of the scanable
files in each dir, so that it can compare the current shapshot to the
snapshot from last time in hopes of detecting virus.

They are necessary if you use MSAV, else they take up little space. I
would recommend a more advanced anti-virus program like Scan v216 by McAfee
or F-Prot v216. I recommend these STRONGLY. They have detected and
cleaned viruses from my computer that MSAV didn't even know existed. These
2 are updated regularly. Plus I have heard of strange errors that MSAV
causes when trying to clean an infected dblspace.bin file.

Good Luck!
Heather

[pchipman]

In article <3m2gac$h...@azure.acsu.buffalo.edu> hth...@cs.buffalo.edu (Heather A Thomas) writes:
>In article <3lvquj$9...@huey.csun.edu>, Greg Margulies wrote:

>They are created and updated each time you run MicroSoft Anti-Virus (MSAV).
>A very simple way to explain what they are is a "snapshot" of the scanable

A very simple snapshot. It's just a checksum - not even an advanced thing like
a CRC-32...

>would recommend a more advanced anti-virus program like Scan v216 by McAfee
>or F-Prot v216. I recommend these STRONGLY. They have detected and

I use F-Prot, McAfee SCAN, and TBAV. Each one has a different advantage - TBAV's
mainly being its extremely advanced disassembler and its large CRCs.

>causes when trying to clean an infected dblspace.bin file.

Well, just like IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS, if it gets infected, you can kiss it goodbye.
It's sort of like the *.COM file infectors that destroy your COMMAND.COM when they
infect it - if Dark Avenger nails your system files, you can kiss your system
goodbye. It's a real pain to fix systems rendered unbootable by a virus. Especially
if the person's AV software is on their hard drive. ;)