Installing F-prot

PLEASE READ THROUGH ALL OF THE DIRECTIONS BEFORE INSTALLING. You may even want to print them out ;-)

Note that I have included a bunch of screen shots for you (denoted by "click for pic" text).

Before we begin, the three golden rules of virus prevention:

  1. NEVER EVER open any attachment that ends in ".exe", ".bat", or ".vbs"
  2. Never open an attachment that you did not specifically request without scanning it first (especially if it's from a friend or colleague). This holds doubly true for papers from students, whether sent as attachments or on disk.
  3. You should scan your computer for viruses ONCE PER MONTH. If you do a lot of work with attachments, once per day. It only takes 5 minutes or so.

  1. To install f-prot from the English Dept. Web server, click the following link:

    ftp://www.engl.niu.edu/public%20downloads/F-PROT/

    You'll see a list of files.

    You'll need to download 3 of these files: the most recent version of fprot (, and the most recent version of each of the two virus definition files.

  2. To download the most recent version of fprot, pick the numerically highest version number and click it (307b is higher than 307).
  3. ALSO click the file called fp-def.zip.
  4. ANDthe file named macrdef2.zip.

  5. When you click on each link, you'll get a warning window

  6. Choose SAVE TO DISK, and you'll get a typical SAVE AS dialog window . Choose the SAVE TO DISK option.

  7. Create an fprot folder on your hard drive by clicking the "new folder" button. Call the new folder "fprot" and make sure you can find it again (hence, note the file path).

  8. SAVE the files to your fprot directory (probably c:\fprot or d:\fprot depending on your machine)

  9. Once you have downloaded all three files, MINIMIZE your Web Browser, open WINDOWS EXPLORER and find the files you just downloaded, and double-click them in turn

    This will launch your winzip program.

  10. Assuming that you downloaded the zip files to your fprot directory, click the "extract" button in the winzip menu (note -- either do not select any of the files, or select all of them).

  11. The extraction process will only take a couple seconds, and you'll be returned to the main winzip screen.

  12. Close WinZip.

  13. That's it -- fprot has been installed.

Once you have installed F-stop, check this page to make sure you have the most recent virus definitions: http://www.engl.niu.edu/nwr/tutorials/fprot_update.html

NOTE -- For those of you running windows95 or windows98 and have F-STOP installed (that little blue icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen), updating your fprot files also updates your F-STOP files. If you're running windowsNT or windows2000, you can't run F-STOP.

NOTE 2 -- You don't have to wait for me to send an announcement to update your fprot. Anytime you want to update your program, follow the steps descripbed on this page. I check for new versions of f-prot every week and upload them to the same place every time, so these instructions will always stay the same. Only the version numbers change.

One more time:

The three golden rules of virus prevention:

  1. NEVER EVER open any attachment that ends in ".exe", ".bat", or ".vbs"
  2. Never open an attachment that you did not specifically request without scanning it first (especially if its from a friend or colleague). This holds doubly true for papers from students, whether sent as attachments or on disk.
  3. You should scan your computer for viruses ONCE PER MONTH. If you do a lot of work with attachments, once per day. It only takes 5 minutes or so.