All audio and video files stopped playing

[B_loc1]

Hi all, im looking for a little help here. All of my audio and video files on my PC will no longer play. I have a ton of home videos that I believe are somehow corrupted. I have tried playing them in VLC, Windows Media, I have tried converting them, nothing will open them and most programs don't recognize them. Most of the files are Mp4, MP3 and AVI files. I have attached a sample video. Is there any way to recover these files? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[digitalcurosity]

That video file will not open on my computer. Have you upgraded the computers OS? If all the audio and video files won't work something has done something to them.

[B_loc1]

I haven't upgraded the OS. If I put new video or audio files on the PC they work fine in all programs. Can a virus corrupt files like this? Malware bytes found a Crypto Virus last month, but quickly got rid of it.

[jagabo]

That video does not have the standard AVI header at the start or the usual keyframe index at the end. Nor does it show any of the usual chunk headers within the rest of the video. Ie, it's full of junk. The drive it came from was probably corrupt.

[digitalcurosity]

Can you take a few of your videos and copy them to a USB Memory card,and take them to a friends computer and see if they will run?

[Cornucopia]

There are verified viruses out there (like CryptoLocker) that work by corrupting ALL the files on your drive(s) - supposedly by encrypting, and then asking ransom for the code to decrypt (which probably never is given even if paid). They usually START by working on the largest files first, and since media files are usually the largest filesizes, those are the ones you see "corrupted".

Hope you got a backup...

Scott

[jagabo]

Can you take a few of your videos and copy them to a USB Memory card,and take them to a friends computer and see if they will run?

No computer is going to play the "AVI" file the OP uploaded. It's an AVI file by name only. The contents of the file is not AVI data. Pretty much all video containers have easily identifiable markers at the start and/or end and/or throughout the file. I didn't see any of those either (I viewed the contents with a hex editor). So it's not another container misnamed as an AVI. It's just junk.

Maybe not all his files are as corrupt as the one he uploaded. It may be possible to recover some of his other videos.

[B_loc1]

Yeah, jagabo is correct. I have tried the files on my laptop as well. Nothing plays, but the files are all still the correct sizes. I have attached an MP4 file this time. Same issue. I do have a backup of some of the files but not all of them, so if there is any way that I can recover them, It would be a great, cause most of them are home videos of my kids.

[Cornucopia]

Forget recovery of THOSE. That's why I said I hope you have a backup.

BTW, if you DO have that virus, which seems to me that you do, you had better DETECT, STOP & REMOVE it, or it will continue on its work of destroying everything you've got...

Scott

[B_loc1]

Thanks Scott,

I believe that it is completely removed, but that is no consolation to the corrupted files! Ha.

[jagabo]

I have attached an MP4 file this time. Same issue.

Nothing useful there either. None of the usual MP4 header features.