May 1995 Upgrading versus Updating ------------------------- The user of anti-virus software are accustomed to update their AV software at regular intervals. Updates are necessary if your anti virus is a scanner. The spreading of new viruses in the past has been relatively slow. It took a year, sometimes even two, for new viruses to become common, in a certain geographical area. Now, with the availability of the networks, virus spreading takes much less than before. The virus exchanges (VX) has also largely contributed to the rapid dissemination of viruses. Once a virus is in the news, thousands of collection owners are looking to add the hot item to their collection, and quite many viruses escaped in the wild this way. Certain viruses have set records and became common within three to six months from their first being reported. Therefore, scanner based anti-virus software need updating, at three months intervals at the longest. Some products are updated with shorter intervals. It is quite common that the producer of a scanner announces a special release when a new virus hits the news. Such were the cases of Junkie and KAOS4. In most cases the hysteria proved to be overblown. InVircible has a virus scanner too. Its database contains only the most common and widespread viruses, just about a couple of hundreds, which are about 5% or less of the total number of viruses. Naturally, it takes quite a long time, a year or longer, for a virus to become really widespread. Only few viruses make it, and this is why IV's scanner has very few viruses added to its database, annually. NetZ Computing keeps publishing new versions of InVircible on a regular basis. Sometimes the new version contains a new virus in its database, but in most cases it does not. The real purpose of these apparently updates is totally different. Since in most cases they do not contain scanner updates, then we will call them what they really are: upgrades. With the constant flux of users' questions, wishes and suggestions, we often improve a certain technique, or fix a bug, or even more likely - add a new feature. If you look in the HISTORY.TXT file, you will notice that there isn't a single version that announced a new virus was added to IV's database. The differences between versions, or revisions, is due to new features, or changes introduced in basic techniques. Do you need to upgrade? ----------------------- If the current version of InVircible works properly on your machine, then it's unlikely that you need to upgrade. Unless you want to, because of a new features included in the newer version. A text file named WHATSNEW.xxx is provided with each upgrade. In the file you'll find a list and description of the improved and of the new features. Before upgrading your current version, read the document to decide if you need the upgrade. There is no need to upgrade InVircible more frequently than once to twice a year, at the most. In the five years since its first version, InVircible proved to be efficient against the viruses that appeared since then, with or without the upgrades. Network administrators are advised to upload the upgraded version to the server, to the directory from which IVlogin is run (see appendix A in the manual). This will automatically upgrade the IV version on the workstation hard disks, when the user logs into the network. How to upgrade a licensed user. ------------------------------- The purchase of a license for the utilization of InVircible is for life, for the specific version that you purchased only, and provides you the the possibility to upgrade without additional charges, for a period of one year. The installation of the IV license to your hard disk earmarks the HARD DISK, not the software, as an IV licensee. The InVircible software recognizes the IV earmark. To upgrade from a lower version, download the newer InVircible version from the BBS or network service of your choice. Open the ZIP file into a temporary directory, change directory to the one containing the new version and run the IVB.EXE program. Watch if the "Licensed" label appears at the upper left corner of the screen. If yes, then your license is still valid and you can then proceed with INSTALL/FAST. It will overwrite the older version with the new one and it will inherit the license of the former version. To upgrade a licensed floppy, format the diskette (deleting all files won't suffice, there is a hidden file on these floppies, this is why it needs formatting) and copy the new version files to it. When done, issue the command IVB A: /A (or B:) to install the IV Armor on the floppy. In case the newer version indicates "Sentry" instead of "Licensed" when running the newer software, then your license term for upgrades expired. You can then choose to purchase a new license for another term, or stay with your current version, for as long as you wish. Once you changed the license from a 6.01x version to 6.02, on your hard disk, then the lower versions will not recognize the hard disk as licensed anymore. Yet the distribution floppy is valid for both 6.01x and 6.02 versions. A last note about Sentry and licensed operation. From version 6.02 and on, when running InVircible in Windows' DOS shell, on an IDE drive, you will notice that IV switched to Sentry mode. When you exit Windows to plain DOS, you will see that it switched back to "licensed". There is a reason for this. InVircible, and anti virus program in general, should not be used for corrective maintenance when in a Windows DOS shell, because of the differences in how they manage low level and hardware access. IV is thus purposely put in Sentry mode, to prevent any user mistakes.