Northwestern students and faculty who downloaded an attachment called “Myparty” on their PCs had little to celebrate when a worm crashed the party.

The medium-risk “W32/Myparty.a@MM” virus sends an e-mail message with the subject “new photos from my party!” according to the Web site McAfee.com. The virus is known as a “worm” because it retrieves recipients’ address information from their default servers and then replicates.

The McAfee DAT, which cleans the virus, is available on HereAndNow. Anyone associated with NU can download the virus protection software and regularly update it.

To remove the virus, users should run a virus scan in the computer’s safe mode and delete the infected files, McAfee.com said.

This mass-mailing worm, which originated Jan. 25 from Russia, carries no destructive payloads like destroying files or crashing the hard drive, said Information Technology’s Wendy Woodward.

“On a scale of one to 10, it’s not a 10-oh-my-God-you’re-in-trouble virus,” said Woodward, associate director of technology support services . “As we’re dealing with this, there are new viruses. Just keep your viruses up-to-date.”

A similar virus, “M32/Myparty.b@MM,” also spread Jan. 20 to 24 through an e-mail attachment, McAfee.com said.

The virus that started spreading Sunday infects only PCs, so Macintosh users missed out on the aftermath of “Myparty.” But the worm tricked some NU users into thinking that if they clicked on the file, they would see photos on a Yahoo! Web site.

Medill Prof. Donna Leff deleted the file from her home and office computers after downloading the attachment in a computer lab Monday at Fisk Hall.

“It was harmless, but I was a little worried that I infected a Medill computing lab,” Leff said.

When McCormick sophomore Dan Shrey opened an e-mail Sunday sent by his friend’s computer at Ohio State, he downloaded a bogus attachment that froze his computer screen and infected his e-mail program. Shrey said he scanned the attachment three times with Norton 2000 antivirus software, but his virus definitions were not up-to-date.

“It’s just a pain,” Shrey said. “I didn’t get really freaked out because my system is protected enough.”