Did I release a virus on my PC?

[mn072065]

I downloaded a WMV file and it says that it has 81,920 KB. After i use Power Archiver, it give me the folder it extracted it to, but there is no file there. Friend send to me who I trust, but don't know if he downloaded it from a reputable site. Did I release a virus on my PC. Thanks for any help.

[poisondeathray]

Impossible to say with any certainty from the lack of information. How do you know it was a .wmv file? What extension did it have? Was it zipped or archived? why did you use "power archiver"?

Notice anything out of the ordinary? Maybe you just changed the default target directory?

Wouldn't hurt to run a virus scan

[Bjs]

A rather strange question?

If this wmv was archived, then get rid of powerachiver, and use something like zipgeniuos to unpack it, as powerachiver has many issues.

If the wmv was not achived, then why are you trying to unpack it, just play it in windows media player.

You may want to try gspot or mediainfo on the file to check what it actually is and contain.

As for virus, you have not mentioned the antivirus product currently in use, so if your looking for one to support you current os, then try avgfree or avast, update till they report no updates available, and run a full system scan. Items found should be moved to virus vault, then deleted, and if serious, you may need to disable the systems restore, reboot, and re-enable, rescan to check all is clear.

As for the receiving of files from this friend, only they know where they acquired the file from, so ask them the link. Then go to http://linkscanner.explabs.com/linkscanner/default.asp, there was another web security scanner but I don't recall the link, it provided a road map of web links connected to the original site and rated them according to risks found.

[Po|arbeaR]

http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

Free online virus scanner. It'll find (but not remove). Good Luck.

-PB

[DarrellS]

I installed a midi program last Wednesday and ever since, AVG Free has been going off every hour or so (I uninstalled the midi program). AVG kept telling me that I had a trojan but when it came to dealing with the file, AVG would either just close or would say it couldn't find the file.

I did online scans that kept finding stuff and getting rid of it but it kept coming back. I installed 4 or 5 other programs that found all kinds of stuff and got rid of it but it kept coming back. I uninstalled AVG FREE and reinstalled AVAST and it found the same file that AVG found but unlike AVG, AVAST did get rid of the file and I haven't had any more alerts in over 24 hours and all my new scans have been clean.

BTW, the midi program was called Ts_wavetomidi

[mn072065]

Thanks all for the replies. I ran it thru my virus scanner, NOD32 3.0, nothing. How i know it's a WMV it says it at the end and it came to me zipped. I used power achiver becasue i thought it was the best zipper prgm. When i unzip it, nothing it contained in the zipped folder. I used Gspot and here is the results,

File Type: ASF (.WMA/.WMV)
Mime Type: video/x-ms-asf
File incorrectly truncated.
· Original size:142 MB (145,411 KB / 148,900,921 bytes)
Sys Bitrate: 509 kb/s
Created: 2006 Jun 28 17:21:27
thanks for trying to help.

[Ai Haibara]

Does the filename show up correctly when you're viewing the contents of the archive in PowerArchiver, or does it (for example) show up as a bunch of 'random' characters? The filename could be in Unicode or in a different language's code.
I work with Japanese filenames, and while I use IZArc as my primary archiver shell in Windows, it doesn't handle Unicode/Japanese filenames, so it won't add them to an archive, or decompress them from an archive that has them (neither will throw up an error for me, either). I don't know if PowerArchiver handles Unicode/other-language filenames properly, though, as I don't use it.

Also, another possibility is that the archive is damaged. PowerArchiver should have some sort of feature to 'Test' the .zip archive.

[mn072065]

thanks for the reply, no it shows the filename, i just believe it's corrupted, i will delete it, i told me friend re-send again using winrar, hopefully that helps.

[DarrellS]

You never did say what the name of the file was that you unzipped and what the file extension was. Things don't make since. You said you downloaded an 80 MB WMV file but then you used some kind of archiver to unzip it? You can't unzip a WMV file.

You said you downloaded it and then said your friend sent it? I'm confused about this whole post.

Like Bjs said, if the file has a WMV extension then just play it in windows media player. No need to try and unzip it.

[mn072065]

ok i'm back, i was on small business trip and could not see or read any of my emails. The file that my friend sent is mymovies.wmv.001. It says it's 80.0 MB large. When i extract it, the folder is empty. My friend is from Puerto Rico and i'm waiting for him to re-send, but i was just curious why i can't open it.

[redwudz]

Since the file title is "mymovies.wmv.001", my guess is that's only part of a archive file and you are missing part .002 or more. Otherwise the title would more likely be something like 'mymovies001.wmv', or 'mymovies001.wmv.zip' if it's a zip file. You might try using 7-zip as it can open different archive file types besides .zip. But you probably need the rest of the files.

[mn072065]

Thanks that was it. I needed part 002. It works after i saw another email that i missed. Thanks alot.