OK, first thing... you said you saw MvCpl, did you mean NvCpl? I can't find anything on Mv but NvCpl is supposed to be there, it is part of your nVideo video card. That needs to be there to initialize the card properly.

But you say McAffe is reporting it as a virus?

OK more long explanations (sorry ).

A virus is a bit of a different thing...

Those files that end in ".dll" the "dll" means "dynamic link library" and that's just a fancy name for a simple thing. DLLs are just files that have lots of program instructions, "routines", but rather than being in the file that is the program itself (the "exe" file, which is the file you actually click to run a program) these instructions are written to a separate file for convenience. Many of the instructions are usefull to more than one application, so this way many applications can share the dll instead of having those instructions written over and over again in each application. It also makes it easier to update applications... if all of the "routines" that perform related chores are organized in one dll, then a change or a bug fix involves just replacing that one dll file with a new one instead of changing the whole program file.

Think of applications, the "exe" files, as recipes... they contain the instructions of how to make "ie" appear and do all of its stuff, "word", etc. Suppose you had a box of recipies, pies, cakes, maybe a whole bunch of pasta dishes. Now you pull a recipe card for one of the pasta dishes, pasta alfredo or something. The first thing you have to do is cook the pasta... fill a pot with water, let it boil, add the pasta, let it boil a certain amount of time, test it, etc. Now if each recipe card for a pasta dish started out with "boil water, add pasta" etc each card would get pretty big pretty fast. Instead you write a separate card with the instructions to cook the pasta, starting with "boil water" (pretend these recipe cards are for your husband to do the cooking while you are out of town ). Then on your "alfredo" card the first thing it says is "find the 'cook pasta' card and do that. After you do that follow these directions..." The pasta card by itself isn't a recipe (unless you like eating plain pasta with no sauce or seasoning) but many of the recipe cards can now share that card.

Suppose you get home from the trip and discover your husband has been eating uncooked, crunchy pasta all week. You follow him to the kitchen and have him show you what he is doing, he follows the card, fills the pot with water, puts it on the stove, adds the pasta... and you realize you forgot to write "turn the fire on under the pot". You can either get a divorce for having such a helpless husband, or you can take out that "cook pasta" card and replace it with one that includes the "light stove" instruction, put that in the box, and now all of the pasta recipies in the box are fixed all in one fell swoop.

There are about a billion dlls that Windows uses and all of your other applications use, they all get accessed very often. One way for a virus to work is to take a known dll and replace it with another one... the new one will contain all of the same functions as the old one (so everything runs OK and no one is suspicious) but adds instructions that can do nasty things or screw up your system. Maybe take a DLL that your email program uses, that accesses the file for your address book, reads a name, creates a new email invisible to you, adds a "clever" message, and attaches an exe file that will install (change) the same dll file on their machine that was changed on yours. Your friend thinks you sent him a funny game, clicks on the attached file, and unwittingly puts the virus on his system.

If McAffe is reporting that your nvcpl file has a virus, it could either be a false positive, or it could really be that a virus changed that file. Does McAffe give the name of the virus? If so you can look it up at http://securityresponse.symantec.com/.

Remember the "nvcpl" file is not the virus, the virus is an alteration of that file, and McAffe should display the name of the virus it found.

If McAffe can't fix it you might want to see if the Symantec site has any info on a tool you can download to remove it. It might require you to uninstall and reinstall your video driver from a fresh copy though... not hard but could be tricky.

While you are on the Symantec site have a gander at all the new viruses that are discovered each day. Many of them are just "lab" viruses that aren't really spreading over networks but you never know. That it is why it is so important to always keep your antivirus definitions up to date.

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--http://www.idexter.com
<div class="foot">(Edited by dexter on 08/27/04 01:52 PM.)</div>