Re: AVI's Have Mysteriously Been Stricken Unplayable/Unreadable? (Worm/Virus)

From: Sandi - Microsoft MVP (sandi_hardmeier_at_mvps.org)
Date: 01/08/04 

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 19:47:41 +0800

>From what I remember, the data is unrecoverable. If it is the virus that I
am thinking of, its quite old and overwrites various file types with source
code of the worm. I would assume the data is lost. 

-- 
_______________________________________
Sandi - Microsoft MVP since 1999 (IE/OE)
http://www.mvps.org/inetexplorer
"com crumb" <lungnut2002@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:3b82575e.0401072253.7164e1e9@posting.google.com...
> AVI's Have Mysteriously Been Stricken Unplayable/Unreadable?
> (Worm/Virus)
>
> I just did a clean install of windows last night and was amazed to
> find myself in the midst of a virus attack as I logged online to grab
> my windows updates. I've never had anything like this happen so it was
> a big shock.
>
> Anyway, after three fdisks and three clean installs (and finally
> enabling a firewall--stupid me), I am virus free.
>
> But that doesn't mean that I'm not suffering from the attack:
>
> Since last night's attack about a quarter of my 320 GB of raw footage
> (yeah, 320 GB) is now unreadable. This footage resides on two separate
> hard drives, and the affected files reside on only one of the hard
> drives.
>
> Premiere's message: "Unable to open that file. File is either damaged,
> an unsupported type, locked or in use by another application."
>
> Media Player 9 opens the file but the audio is a digital train wreck
> of squeals and squeaks and the video doesn't display at all. Also, the
> duration of the clip (minutes/seconds) shows that the file is roughly
> 3 times as long as it should be. The file size I don't believe has
> been changed, though.
>
> Quicktime refuses to open these files because it says that "it isn't a
> file that Quicktime understands."
>
> The files' "DATE MODIFIED" doesn't reflect any changes in the past
> day. They all reflect the last time I trimmed the files--late last
> month. They all played fine before this attack.
>
> Also, if I right click the files to get their properties, it lists the
> file as a "Video File" (and the extention, *.avi has stayed the same).
> But, curiously, if I click on the tab "SUMMARY" where information
> usually could be found about the clip, now only this is shown:
> "Summary properties are unavailable for the selected source(s)."
>
> And, finally, to add to the mystery: The worm/virus also infected my
> "Music/MP3" hard drive (200+ GB of files). Initially, the hard drives
> contents "disappeared". But Windows XP (on its own--without my
> request), ran a check on the hard drive during a bootup and in a
> process that took half an hour, recovered what it called "orphan
> files". Now the hard drive is up and healthy and all the files seem to
> play fine.
>
> However, I have a large collection of pictures/jpgs and tens of
> thousands of those have been rendered "unreadable."
>
> While that stresses me out somewhat, what really matters right now is
> this raw footage. Is it recoverable? Can you at least help me
> understand what transpired?
>
> Thanks.

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