Is there a way to scan for viruses from Terminal.app in Mac OS X?

I really doubt that a virus is to blame. If you could share some of the symptoms maybe we could start troubleshooting from there.

My desktop keeps disappearing, and my programs keep stalling, ie.. safari, itunes(that keeps crashing) and i cant actually get Norton to start, keeps quitting?

Why are you running Norton. That is problem one.

Have your run Onyx or Cocktail lately? and/or repaired permissions?

I promise you don’t have a virus.

what should I be running? I’m not familiar with onyx or cocktail. Havent changed or repaired permissions.

Most of us don’t run any anti-virus. There is no need. Never has been.

Onyx

Cocktail

Choose one of these two applications to run some Unix maintenance on your system.

I personally use Onyx about one ever 3 weeks or so. Under automate check everything and run it. This will clean up your system including repairing permissions.

Cocktail does about the same things; I just prefer Onyx.

Your problems should go away after you restart, which Onyx will prompt you to do.

will it identify duplicte files? I have a ton as I have backed up to different drives over the years…

That really isn’t what those applications are for; but I am sure you can look on www.macupdate.com for an application that does.

Have you tried creating a new user account? Use that and see if the problem persist. That can help determine if it is a “User” or “System” problem.