just because some poser users got hit badly doesn't mean this forum should turn into a virus discussion forum. if you need help with severe cardiovascular problems, do you ask in a poser forum? i hope not. the best place to discuss this sort of thing is in a dedicated forum with specialists on virus protection, not in a poser forum where the vast majority of people (friendly or not) will not be well-informed about viruses, and false information will get spread around (like this idea that DAZ is responsible, or that people who got it are warez users). anyone who reformatted should learn how to look up virus information, and pick one of the sites that explains step-by-step procedures appropriate to their own level of familiarity with their OS. drastic measures such as reformatting or reinstalling the OS are very rarely needed. i got win32.polip.a too on my windows machine, even though i am extremely vigilant about virus protection, and i scan everything, even executables from microsoft -- neither of my AVs detected it at the time. i suspected i had an unknown virus when i saw a normal process using unreasonable amounts of processing power; that's a dead giveaway. a google search gave me all the information i needed to fix the problem. and yes, i too wondered whether it might've come from DAZ because i had very recently downloaded a whole batch of items, and scanning with cureit found the infection widespread in my poser directories. so i checked by downloading the same files with my mac and scanning them there. they were not infected. the infection was probably so prevalent in my poser directories because i had executed more DAZ executables than other files when organizing my new acquisitions (and the whole batch was infected by the already running virus process when downloading). this virus started around march 20, it spreads very easily, under the radar because it's not directly destructive, and almost all of the big AVs totally missed it for nearly a month; it could have come from anywhere by the time i (and you) got it. demanding pure on-topicness is silly; that's not how communities work. not caring how PC users might be affected because one has a mac is selfish. however, at most one thread for this virus should be enough. i don't think it's asking too much that people at least scan a few days worth of subject headlines before making a new post.