Using Office 2003, Win XP SP2. Tried to open files in Word and each one I
opened turned into a zero-byte file with no characters. Word erased most
files in a directory that way.

Has anyone seen similar behavior?

One possible reason for the file size changing to 0 bytes is the
ExploreZip worm... see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ven...plore.zip.html .

John Barnes wrote:

Using Office 2003, Win XP SP2. Tried to open files in Word and each one I
opened turned into a zero-byte file with no characters. Word erased most
files in a directory that way.

Has anyone seen similar behavior?

Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded the fix and ran it 2x, didn't find
worm.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

"garfield-n-odie" wrote:

One possible reason for the file size changing to 0 bytes is the
ExploreZip worm... see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ven...plore.zip.html .

John Barnes wrote:

Using Office 2003, Win XP SP2. Tried to open files in Word and each one I
opened turned into a zero-byte file with no characters. Word erased most
files in a directory that way.

Has anyone seen similar behavior?

Are the files on a local hard drive, a network share, or a floppy
disk? If it's a network share, the problem could be
network-related, such as described in
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=138014 (this particular
article doesn't apply to WinXP though). If it's a floppy disk,
then you shouldn't be opening Word files directly from a floppy,
because doing so will probably corrupt the files or the floppy.
Instead, copy the files to your hard drive and open the copies on
the HD.

John Barnes wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded the fix and ran it 2x, didn't find
worm.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

"garfield-n-odie" wrote:


One possible reason for the file size changing to 0 bytes is the
ExploreZip worm... see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ven...plore.zip.html .

John Barnes wrote:


Using Office 2003, Win XP SP2. Tried to open files in Word and each one I
opened turned into a zero-byte file with no characters. Word erased most
files in a directory that way.

Has anyone seen similar behavior?

Files are on hard drive, not on network or floppy. I checked today and the
number of zero byte files are spreading.

"garfield-n-odie" wrote:

Are the files on a local hard drive, a network share, or a floppy
disk? If it's a network share, the problem could be
network-related, such as described in
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=138014 (this particular
article doesn't apply to WinXP though). If it's a floppy disk,
then you shouldn't be opening Word files directly from a floppy,
because doing so will probably corrupt the files or the floppy.
Instead, copy the files to your hard drive and open the copies on
the HD.

John Barnes wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded the fix and ran it 2x, didn't find
worm.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

"garfield-n-odie" wrote:


One possible reason for the file size changing to 0 bytes is the
ExploreZip worm... see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ven...plore.zip.html .

John Barnes wrote:


Using Office 2003, Win XP SP2. Tried to open files in Word and each one I
opened turned into a zero-byte file with no characters. Word erased most
files in a directory that way.

Has anyone seen similar behavior?

I honestly don't know what's going on, but you're the second
person to report this in as many days. This was a common
question a few years ago when the ExploreZip worm was released.
All of the antivirus programs recognize this worm now, so it
hasn't been a problem in more recent times.

John Barnes wrote:

Files are on hard drive, not on network or floppy. I checked today and the
number of zero byte files are spreading.

"garfield-n-odie" wrote:


Are the files on a local hard drive, a network share, or a floppy
disk? If it's a network share, the problem could be
network-related, such as described in
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=138014 (this particular
article doesn't apply to WinXP though). If it's a floppy disk,
then you shouldn't be opening Word files directly from a floppy,
because doing so will probably corrupt the files or the floppy.
Instead, copy the files to your hard drive and open the copies on
the HD.

John Barnes wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded the fix and ran it 2x, didn't find
worm.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

"garfield-n-odie" wrote:



One possible reason for the file size changing to 0 bytes is the
ExploreZip worm... see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ven...plore.zip.html .

John Barnes wrote:



Using Office 2003, Win XP SP2. Tried to open files in Word and each one I
opened turned into a zero-byte file with no characters. Word erased most
files in a directory that way.

Has anyone seen similar behavior?