A virus is playing havoc with the municipal court operations in Houston.

HOUSTON (AP) -- A virus is playing havoc with the municipal court operations in Houston.

The court system had to close down Friday afternoon after a computer virus affected staff members' access to data on court cases.

Courtroom operations aren't expected to be back in business before Thursday morning.

Meanwhile, people can pay fines and conduct other court business, but judges will not call dockets.

The city of Houston is paying $25,000 to a private firm to fix the virus isolated to 475 of the city's 16,000 computers.

City officials identified the problem as a new variant of the computer virus known as Virut.

A spokeswoman for the municipal courts system, Gwendolyn Goins, told the Houston Chronicle that the virus infects the part of Microsoft Windows that handles the login process.

City officials said the virus was preventing them from logging into the system and accessing information.

Goins said last night she didn't know how many cases were affected by the inability of judges to call the dockets.

She said there was no evidence the virus was released deliberately.

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