Weird Norton AntiVirus Popup Message

Question

Level 4

3,541 points

Weird Norton AntiVirus Popup Message

Hello all.

On and off these few days, when I start up my mac while a few apps start up, like Mail and iTunes (when I plug in my iPod), I will get this Norton Anti-virus Pop-up Message:

Norton AntiVirus Repair Alert

The compressed archive 17096.emlx is infected. It cound not be repaired. (OK Button)

Sometimes this message will pop up a few times continuosly, clicking OK and no more will pop up.

Here's a sample of the message:
http://web.mac.com/howwow/iWeb/howwow%27s%20Apple%20Discussion/Main.html

Can anyone tell me what is going on? Is this harmful or harmless?

Thanks and cheers

iMac G5 20" (Ambient Light Sensor) •, Mac OS X (10.4.6), • 250G HD • 2G Ram • iPod nano 4G • iPod 60G • 12" PowerBook

Posted on Jul 20, 2006 6:57 PM

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Answer 1

Dave Stowe

Level 5

5,180 points

Jul 20, 2006 7:07 PM in response to howwow

howwow....I use Norton A/V also and have all along with OS X...

I have not seen that message but any infected file that I have seen said it could not be repaired... I suspect it was always something to do with Windows and I always deleted them without a problem...

don't know if this is comforting or not...

dave

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Answer 2

Jul 21, 2006 8:33 PM in response to howwow

howwow, if you search these forums you will find dozens of people having problems using Norton with Imacs. I use Norton on my old PCs and it is a top notch product but has caused problems with some Macs. If you want a Mac friendly AV you may want to try clamXav, from what I heard it is what Apple uses on the servers so it must work well. Bob :~))

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Answer 3

howwow Author

Level 4

3,541 points

Jul 22, 2006 1:29 AM in response to Bob Jackins

Actually what I posted was to ask about the weird finding or report NAV made. I don't have any problems running NAV, which runs on this iMac, my PB, my sis's iMac G3 and my office PM G5.

In fact, on Dr. Smoke's website he has extensive writing on computer virus and he too recommends NAV, which has vastly improved on the Mac OS X platform.

Anyway, I ran NAV to scan my main HD and found the files, I just deleted them. Odd enough, Spotlight failed to search for those files.

Thanks and cheers

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Answer 4

Jul 22, 2006 10:15 AM in response to howwow

howwow--

Anyway, I ran NAV to scan my main HD and found the
files, I just deleted them. Odd enough, Spotlight
failed to search for those files.

Hmm. Those "emlx" files are email messages. I'm not sure why Spotlight wouldn't find them, but if you dig deep enough into your ~/Library/Mail folder, you'll come across them. It looks like they're the raw email message with some extra data at the bottom in the form of XML "plist" information, which is the default for OS X preference files.

I'd just give a word of caution, by the way. If you're not sure about the file, be cautious about allowing the anti-virus program to delete it. There was a case a while back where NAV was detecting a false positive in the swapfile, which it quarantined, causing kernel panics.

charlie

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