A friend of mine who still uses OS 9 called earlier today to let me know a word file he sent me has a macro virus. He can no longer open any word documents. I don't use word much but am now concerned since I don't run any virus protection and am not behind a firewall.

I also don't know much at all about this stuff in an OSX environment.

Can anyone help? I'm on a PowerMac G5 running Panther 10.3.9.

I just recently move to this computer and am having font headaches as well. My FontBook has completely crashed so I'm now running Suitcase instead but all that is a separate issue.

thanks--

Hello,

In your case, the Word Macro virus does all it's damage in Microsoft Word -- and it is on a different layer than the OS. A Macro virus should not affect your OS X install, unless you open Word and let it run it's course.

As you are using OS X, unless you went into the network control panel and moved things off the defaults, you are running a software firewall. That is a good thing.

To locate a nice free OS X antivirus package, look at ClamAV. It works with linux and OS X, and is free, and they are responsive. Check that package out to scan your drives, and make sure things are OK. You will notice that ClamAV doesn't have the usual charm of an OS X program -- that's ok, it is still configurable -- but it will feel a bit different, as it is designed by linux people.

As for your OS 9 friend, I have been out of OS 9 for too long now, and have not kept track of antivirus for the platform.

As for your other issue, please start a new thread about the problem with fontbook.

Christian