virus definitions backup problem 4

[olin]

I am using Norton Antivirus 2003. I wanna reinstall Windows, but how can I backup all the virus definitions?
I don't want to update them again after I reinstall Norton, because it spends a lot of time. Could you help me?

Thanks very much!

 

[glacierxx]

Don't know the OS in use but most virus def folders are in the location.
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared" Copy the "VirusDefs" Folder.

"evil prospers when good men do nothing”

 

[olin]

Thanks! glacierxx.

I found that folder. May I ask a litter more?

I found there were many subfolders in that folder, some of which is named by date, some name of thich is like tmpX.tmp (X is a number), and others are like BinHub, TextHub, incoming...

Many of these subfolder has the similar files structure (some .dll, some .dat, some .inf......). Should I backup all the subfolders or only one of them is the latest one that I may backup only?

thanks again!

 

[glacierxx]

The VirusDef folder contains several subfolders which I will try to explain:

First here are the folders that should be there:
Normally two folders with dates:
20040217.017 and 20040218.021 - these are your virus definition folders the most current and the last update.
BinHub
Incoming
texthub
Definfo.dat
Usage.dat

The TMP.xxx are signs of a corrupt virus definition or left over from one. These can be deleted.

The one thing you make sure of is that the Definfo.dat and usage.dat match the definition folders. for example using the two def folders above the Definfo.dat should look like this when opened with notepad:
[DefDates]
CurDefs=20040218.021
LastDefs=20040217.017

and the usage.dat should look like this:
[20040218.021]
DEFWATCH_10=1
NAVCORP_70=1

Now to answer what to back up - everything except the tmp.xxx

good luck.

"evil prospers when good men do nothing”

 

[olin]

Thanks very much! Your post is quite helpful. I have gave it a star

 

[vbothe]

I found suddenly that on a number of workstations I was extremely low on hard drive space. Since everything is saved on the server it didn't make sense. This post directed me to the virusdefs folder which had almost 700 .tmp files holding almost 9 gigs. I had some workstations down to almost 2 mgs. Apparently I had a 3 day period of when these were accruing.


Thank you for this post which allowed me to delete these .tmp files without worry.

Victoria