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General discussion

thousands of zip files

Feb 25, 2004 8:54AM PST

So here is my problem. Yesterday I ran defrag and some system clean-up suff, and I must have done something wrong. Now there are THOUSANDS of .zip files all over my computer. Every file I open up has some (three or four in the start menu, three or four in each of my "favorites" files, lots in my pictures and in each individual CD file in my music, in my documents, in every single program file, the list goes on). Some were even sent to be burned onto my CD drive and some are on my desktop!

My computer is RAMPANT with .zip files (oh, and a FEW are .exe files, too) with names like xnwguykhvjcru.zip. Oh, and I have about 40 pictures (.bmp, .jpg, and .gif) missing from my pictures file. QUESTION: What did I do, and how do I fix it?!?! Please, dear God, someone help me. (I'm not kidding about the thousands of files, I searched and I found about 3200 total)

Discussion is locked

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Re:thousands of zip files
Feb 25, 2004 10:27AM PST

To be perfectly honest, this sounds like virus activity to me. One that tends to sit dormant for some period of time, then start messing with things. In this case, putting everything into zip files, which will (if they aren't already) be encrypted and password protected forcing you to reformat.

Might be a very prudent thing to be sure your virus scanner is up to date and run a full system scan.

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Re:thousands of zip files
Feb 25, 2004 12:23PM PST

Jenn,

What kind of "system clean-up stuff" did you do?

In the meantime, here's someplace to start:

Please click on either of the links below and run the free online scans that they provide. Delete any infected files that are found:

Trend Micro's Housecall Online Scanner

Panda Antivirus Online Scanner

Next, download, install, update from within the user interface, then run the free spyware removal tools below:

Ad-Aware 6 Spyware Removal Tool

?Spybot Search & Destroy? Spyware Removal Tool

Hope this helps and let us know what you find.

Grif