Originally written by Symantec and sold as Symantec Antivrus for Macintosh, it became part of the "Norton" branded products sold by Symantec after they acquired Peter Norton Computing. Norton Anti-Virus became a popular product on DOS, Windows, and Macintosh (SAM was renamed to NAV in 1998) and battled the then-new threat of malicious software. In 2015, Symantec unified their security product lineup under the single "Norton Security" product. It was also bundled with Norton SystemWorks.
Based on Norton AntiVirus 2.0 for DOS, this free version was offered due to the publicized Michelangelo virus in early 1992. This version is used only to detect the Michelangelo virus, and encourages users to purchase the full version.
From the READ.ME file of what the Michelangelo does:
"The Michelangelo virus activates itself on March 6th, the
anniversary of Michelangelo's birth. The Michelangelo virus is
spread only by floppy disks - not over networks or by connecting
to electronic on line services and bulletin boards. The virus is
transferred to memory and hard disks when an attempt is made to
start up (boot) your computer from a floppy disk that is infected.
The floppy does not have to be a bootable floppy disk; it can be
simply a floppy disk with data files on it. Once the virus is on
the hard disk, it will infect every floppy that you put in your
computer, thereby creating further infections that help it
continue to spread.
On March 6th, if the machine is infected when it is started, the
virus will be activated and will begin formatting the hard disk.
This will cause all data on the hard disk to be irretrievably
destroyed."
In DOS, run NAV.EXE from the floppy disk. No installation required.
Download name | Version | Language | Architecture | File size | Downloads |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Norton AntiVirus Michelangelo Edition (1992) (3.5-720k) | Michelangelo Edition | English | 435.92KB | 1 |