Mysterious files

Hi,
I was looking for a particular file in my Windows folder and came across some strange looking files of which I am suspicious (see attached jpeg). They are each about 1K, without extensions. I have not opened them to see what's in them, but I use Norton Internet Security and have it constantly on, with all options enabled and it didn't catch these. Nonetheless, can anyone shed any light on these?

Thanks in advance,
Jake

Looks fishy to me.

If you open a command prompt to that directory and execute a dir /ash, do they show the same?

EDIT: also that entire directory of C:\Windows\File does not appear to exist on any of my windows 7 machines here. The fishiness escalates! You may want to try running a scan with Malwarebytes and see if you've picked up an infection.

They are fishy but, one thing that i noticed is that the "Date Modified" has different dates.
Normally a virus would create files all at once..not in weird intervals like this.

EDIT: Ahem!!, i dont see the folder named "File" in the sidebar..?:shock:

YBL

youllbelost said:

They are fishy but, one thing that i noticed is that the "Date Modified" has different dates.
Normally a virus would create files all at once..not in weird intervals like this.

YBL

Click to expand...

If they had been extracted from a compressed archive they would retain their original "Modified Date" timestamps though, no?

I've seen this in years past but not recently. Usually related to a corrupted file that Windows or a utility tried to recover (looked to be related to a "lost" or corrupt file start/end pointer).

Have also seen this develop when a hard drive sector goes bad. Run the Windows error check utility to verify your drive.

Regards,
GEWB

TCG said:

If they had been extracted from a compressed archive they would retain their original "Modified Date" timestamps though, no?

Click to expand...

Yes they would, good point.

I recommend running multiple scanners just in case, try software like MalwareBytes, Ad-Aware, and whatever anti-virus you've got.
I've had multiple bad experiences with Norton, I recommend using Avast instead (it's free btw).

FYI, Norton Internet Security is not Norton Antivirus. They do, and protect, different things. Get yourself an actual antivirus product, ASAP (unless you just mistyped and you do have the antivirus as well).

Have you booted into safe mode and ran your antivirus yet? I can't say for sure those look like they are malicious or not. Usually such things do not create so many files in the same folder at different times as this greatly increases the likelihood of discovery.

GEWB may be on to something as well. Run a checkdisk on your local hard drive, as well as launch a command prompt as admin and run "sfc /scannow".