The names on the SOME of the folders in my Maxtor external hard 500gb
drive have changed into the strange heiroglyphic looking stuff which I
believe is computer code. (( (°�₧δ█╔
.âòS ) it doesnt look like
that but similar on my pc, that is what i got when i copied and
pasted it here. )) Not every folder has changed, maybe
more than 100 GB has changed and is not accessible. These folders
are pictures, video, and audio, and maybe documents.

In my music folder some still are normal and play normally . The
changed ones with the computer code names say that they have dozens of
gigabytes when they just had perhaps a 100 mb. Those folders when i
try to open them say there is a syntax error and do not open.

I think this occurred while trying to open a video but am not sure if
that is the cause. I have scanned this hard drive with AVG free and it
didnt find any viruses except for something named:
kernel32.dll C:\windows\sytem32\kernel32.dll
shell32.dll C:\windows\sytem32\shell32.dll

in the result infection column it says : change
this kernel32.dll thing has been popping up in my pc for the last few
days when i tried to shut it down.

Should I transfer all my working files out of that hard drive?

Should I run system restore?

Should I unplug and then replug in my hard drive.

Should I shut down my pc and restart it.

Is this a virus? Any other suggestions?

Thanks

On May 10, 9:09 pm, roky <rokyb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well I worked up the courage to unplug the hard drive after being told
it was probably not a virus and when I plugged it back in everything
was back to normal. So was this due to software in the hard drive not
operating correctly?

Thanks.

roky wrote:
Not really computer code... just random bytes (read from the wrong
location) interpreted as characters.

So it's either corrupted data on the disk or corrupted data in memory in
the file system buffers.

Has AVG given a name to the virus? Because these two files are (in their
unadulterated version) a core part of Windows.

Backup copies are always a good idea...

Not yet.

Won't help.

Can help, if it's a case of corrupted data in memory.

Could be, but a Windows bug is always possible. Which version are you
running?

You can also run a disk error check (in XP: drive properties, "Tools" tab).