I have a few problems with my computer which I hope you can help me resolve. Firstly, I believe my computer (a Pentium using Windows 95) has been infected by a Trojan virus. The warning with the words Trojan Virus appeared just as a flash on the screen and then disappeared just as quick. I’ve used the latest McAfee Antivirus to scan the hard disks. In no way does McAfee indicate that the virus has been detected, or even deleted. As reported in the Canberra Times of 3/4/00, normal virus checker doesn’t pick up the Trojan virus. Is it true? If it is, what shall I do to get rid of it? Please advise. Secondly, I found a file in the C drive which is enormously large. It’s under C:Win386.swp and has 83.5 MB. I tried to open it to see what it is, incidentally using Acrobat reader. When I opened the file, a message appeared saying “There was an error opening this document. Sharing violation” And I was stuck there! So now the question is: how can I open the file? What is this file for and what is swp? Can I actually delete this file (it is taking up 83.5 MB of hard disk space)? Will the deletion do any harm to the rest of the system? Thirdly, I intend to use Norton Utilities’ Space Wizard to create more disk space by finding unneeded files. There are two methods available. The first is “Express” and the second is “Comprehensive”. The files retrieved using Express are mostly “windows emp” and program files …cache”. The files total 36.6 MB! I can either Compress, Delete or Move. Which is the better way to do? I want to delete them but am afraid of doing the wrong thing. Can you please advise me.

Normal virus checkers should be able to pick up Trojan horse virus but not necessarily be able to delete them. I have three options for you to choose from. Firstly, I suggest that you download a program called The Cleaner. The Cleaner is a program dedicated to finding and removing Trojan horses from your computer. You can download this from: www.moosoft.com/cleaner.html . If The Cleaner doesn’t pick up a Trojan horse on your computer, I suggest you download another virus scanner named InnoculateIT. This is a free virus scanner which should pick up any viruses The Cleaner didn’t. This can be downloaded from antivirus.cai.com . If InnoculateIT doesn’t pick up any viruses then chances are it was a false alarm and you don’t have a Trojan on your computer. However, if you are still worried about it I suggest that you download a very good freeware application named ZoneAlarm. ZoneAlarm acts as a firewall between your computer and the internet and can be set up so your computer can only act as a client on the internet, not a server, so people cannot connect to your computer (like people do when they use a Trojan on another persons computer). ZoneAlarm can be downloaded from www.zonelabs.com . Regarding your second question, do NOT delete the Win386.swp file. This file is the Windows swap file which is used for virtual memory. This allows your computer to extend its real memory so that it thinks it has more RAM than it actually does. For example, if you have 16mb RAM this could be extended out to 18mb by using hard disk space as RAM in the form of a swap file. There is no need to fiddle with these settings because Windows automatically configures it to optimum performance. Not only should you leave the swap file alone, I doubt that you could delete the file anyway because you would probably get another sharing violation, but I wouldn’t test that theory just in case. Regarding your final question, you are pretty safe if you want to delete those files. The files in the /temp and /cache directories are normally temporary Windows or internet files which Windows should have automatically deleted but appears not to have got around to tidying up the files yet. However, if you do want to play it safe, compressing the files is a viable option.