[updated]false alarm: new Mac virus!?
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It was false alarm
Thanks god, it wasn't virus after all!
I am so glad I could solve it so quickly thanks to James Thomson who has just release DragThing 5.1--another entry about that later.
After a simple restart of "Finder", using DragThing of course ;-), my generic icons have turned back to normal icon.
James explains:
Sometimes, the "IconServices" API gets confused I think and returns the wrong icon.
James think it is a memory corruption problem.
A few mystery still remains ...
- the icon
I haven't seen this icon before and can't figure out where it come from. I thought it might be a virus because it kind of looked evil and malicious ;-)
- Excel icon
even after the restart of Finder, the Excel icon remained as skelton icon. After "Get Info"> choose icon> hit "delete" key, it became normal Excel icon. So the icon was just pasted over the Get info window but by who?
- PowerBook not restarted since yesterday?
James think a simple logout should have also solved this problem. Because I have a AirPort (AirMac) problem, I think I have shutdown my system at least once this morning. I wonder why my icon didn't get back to normal then.
Maybe the answer to 2 & 3 are... I also had a memory corruption problem because I was too busy and sleepy.
Anyway, if you have any icon problem just logout and log back in!
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I haven't confirmed this yet.
I am looking for reports and information from others (not by mail but by comments or trackback here).
Since last night, I started to see some skelton-like icons on my desktop as seen below:
I have realized that the generic icon for applications have changed to it. I also saw some documents icons (of Excel) have changed.
Are there anyone else experiencing the same?
Can this be a new virus?
I have been looking at the Activity Monitor but couldn't find any suspicious process yet.
I'd also like to note, I have been testing about a dozen shareware/freeware in past few days (none of them are related to icon management) and machine was left unattended (for few hours) in several places, so this can be a mischief by my colleagues.
Does any one know the origin of this icon?
