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General discussion

All files in Documents & Settings become 0 KB

by chow_yee Apr 26, 2004 7:41PM PDT

Hi. I'm trying to troubleshoot my friend's computer (Windows XP Pro).

All the files in his Documents & Settings became 0 KB in size. The file name still exists, but the files are all 0 bytes in length. When I check on their last modification date, all of them are 9 Apr 2004.

Since only the files in Documents & Settings are affected, I deduce that this must be a work of a virus or worm. I tried searching for what is the virus which does this, but until now, I still can't find the name of the virus/worm responsible for this.

Do you have any ideas on what I should do? Is there any way for me to try to recover his files? Or should I just declare his documents 'dead'??

Thanks for your replies!

Discussion is locked

2 Posts

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Re:All files in Documents & Settings become 0 KB. Looks like virus/other to me too.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Apr 26, 2004 9:13PM PDT

This is usually how people learn that hard disks are temporary storage space.

Have them get the virus/trojan/parasites out and then copy it back in from the last backup.

Bob

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Re:All files in Documents & Settings become 0 KB

by Kees Bakker Apr 27, 2004 1:01AM PDT

How did you search for the name of the malware? There are some specialized programs (so called anti-virus programs) that are designed to find them on your computer and they provide the name also. Might be the best way to do it.

Start with housecall.antivirus.com, I should say. Then maybe download and install free AVG from www.grisoft.com?

Hope this helps.

Kees

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