The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[rmoore55]

When I try to play, I get a message that says THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN DAMAGED POSSIBLY BY A BAD SECTOR OR A VIRUS. PLEASE RE-INSTALL IT.

I tried repairing it - same message
I tried uninstalling and downloading it. Still same message

Help please

[Son of Pappocom]

This error was popping up about a month ago and has started again just recently. In both cases anti-virus software seems to be the culprit.

The first occurrence was due to eTrust/CA antivirus software and was fixed in a patch a week or two afterward. The second occurrence appears to be due to AOL's bundled version of McAfee. I'm waiting to hear back from them on the subject, but pausing the real-time scanning feature of your antivirus program should be a temporary fix.

Regards
Scott

[jklein]

Simply disabling virus protection doesn't work on my system. If I disable AOLSoftware, AOLSP Scheduler, mcvsescn, mpftray, oasclnt, SSCRun, and Updreg using System Configuration (msconfig) and reboot, Sudoku will run, but my system is vulnerable to attack from just about anywhere. As long as I don't connect to the internet, I'm OK, but I have to renable everything and reboot again befote I feel safe getting on the Web. BTW, AOL recently updated their Security Suite, about the time I started having this problem. The version I'm running is 210.5.2.1. Sure hope a fix is imminent!!

[Son of Pappocom]

Unfortunately, there's not much we (i.e. Pappocom) can do about it: McAfee generates the error. I've heard that rolling back to a system restore point before the latest McAfee update as worked for some; could you try that?

Regards
Scott

[MauriceCSmith]

The rollback option is pretty weak. Doesn't that mean any subsequent virus's are free to attack my computer. Thank goodness I haven't paid my credit card bill yet!

[Son of Pappocom]

Hi Maurice,

I would guess that it is an engine update, not a signature update, causing the problem, so a rollback to the previous engine may be a viable fix. As I'm not an AOL user I have no way to tell. I sympathise with your position, but again, there's not much we can do ourselves. The error, even though it appears when Sudoku is run, is actually coming from McAfee.

Regards
Scott

[Son of Pappocom]

Hi folks,

A tip-off from a new forum member is as follows:

1. Go to Start -> Run
2. Type 'msconfig' and hit Enter
3. Go to the 'Services' tab
4. Look for "CA Pest Patrol Realtime" and uncheck the box next to it.
5. Click 'OK' and then 'Restart' when prompted.

This seemed to work for one person at least, so might be worth a shot.

Regards
Scott

[jklein]

Confirmation from another source. I uninstalled Pest Patrol using the Installer package (.msi file) I found in my WINDOWS\Downloaded Installations folder, and Sudoku runs fine. AOL Safety and Security also seems to run just fine. I assume Pest Patrol is an anti-spyware package; I don't remember installing it, and SSC spyware scan works without it.

[MauriceCSmith]

Same result for me. Does anyone know where this came fron. I noticed it's author "unknown" in msconfig

[jklein]

The "CA" indicates it's from Computer Associates, a reasonably well known outfit. Their websites offer "Pest Patrol" as a free trial as well as a full version for sale for $19.95 or $29.95 (depending on where you look). If somehow we got the trial version installed, I would have expected it to bug us about upgrading. Since that never happened, we must have had the full version. I'm really curious where it came from.

[Son of Pappocom]

I would say I've had reports of the problem from a good 30-40 people in the past couple of weeks. All were from AOL addresses. McAfee is not CA, so I'm not quite sure why, but it seems this program was sneaked in during the last McAfee update (which is what I'd put it down to before).

Thanks for all the confirming reports; I've lodged a complaint with the new information.

Regards
Scott

[jklein]

Follow up to my last post --
I tried reinstalling AOL SSC over the previous installation, and nothing changed. Out of curiosity, I uninstalled SSC, and then reinstalled it. Guess what - Pest Patrol was back. Interesting that it didn't show up in the list on "Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs". I uninstalled it again using the .msi file in the "Windows\Downloaded Installations" folder.