Infected/Damaged MP3s

[edka]

about a year ago I got a virus (I think it was a varient of the love letter virus) which destroyed a lot of my mp3s. Since then, I've noticed that the mp3s that survived the the virus seem to have something wrong with then. Even though they play fine and I can burn them to cd, whenever I do something like move them or rename them I get a message saying "are you sure you want to move/rename the system file '_____.mp3'". I've scanned my computer with virus programs and it doesn't seem to pick up anything. Does anyone know whats wrong with them?

[lion7718]

Right Click on a song, click on Properties, Uncheck the boxes at the bottom. This should solve you problems.

[edka]

thanks for the help but doesn't seem to work. The box next to Archive is ticked on all my mp3s (including the healthy ones). Unchecking it doesn't seem to do much but they have a habit of re-checking themselves after I rename/move the file....

[Rickio]

If I were you I would burn them all to cd's and delete them off your computer. If you cannot delete them you have to login in under dos mode and then you can delete them. That is a hassle but it will work.
I am trying to figure out why your having this problem. I have had this trouble with other files, not mp3's though.
Also it you might want to close any media player or whatever you use to play the files before you try to rename or delete. Sometimes I application holds a file and won't give it up, so you have to close anything related to playing your files.
Last resort is to delete under dos and you will need to learn a few commands, I recommend buying a book on dos as it really does help in emergencies when your operating system is damaged or not repsonding like your mentioning.

[Tzaddi28thPath]

Do you use a version of Windows that has restore? and if so did you disable restore when you cleaned, repaired or removed the virus? If you did not then when windows backs itself up then it will just keep all that nastiness. McAfee usually makes note of this feature and tells you exactly how to do this when it finds a virus, I dunno about Norton. And also if you don't start your puter in safe mode & scanreg you can keep all them left over yuckies too.

this problem seems to be due to the fact that you have left the mp3 to have only read only access to the file. this simply means that you have left the mp3s to be read only, and since you wanna rename it you must right click on the mp3 and remove all the checks, then you will be able to rename the files without any problems.
this sounds exactly like the problem.
one more thing before you do this, make sure the mp3 file is not being playing in a mp3 player, cuz this will not allow you to rename the file since the media player is holding on the file. so you must make sure that you have access to the mp3 and do what i said above and you will surely have no more problems.
the reason that the problem your having is because read only access has only read access, this means that the file will not have been allow to have writing privledges. in a way this is good to protect this file, but if you want to rename the file, as this is the case this is what you should do which i am describing for you how to resolve this issue by doing what i said above. if you have more problems post back and i will help ya.

[edka]

@crackerjacker - the read only box on the files are not ticked. Also, I am able to rename the tracks, I'm just asked if I'm sure I want to first.
@Tzaddi28thPath - the virus I had infected all my system restores files I think. Eventually I was just left with about 2000 infected files in a folder called '_RESTORE' which I could not delete, but they just disapeared eventualy. So I never really cleaned/repaired the virus - it just sort of went away in the end. At least I hope it did!

[Tzaddi28thPath]

uh..... .. your scaring me.. what do you mean by

Eventually i was just left with about 2000 files in a folder called '_RESTORE'

The _restore is your system restore and you really shouldn't try and mess with it., what you should do is re-run your anti-virus if you have one and see what the results are. If you don't have an anti-virus how do you know you had a virus to begin with???

And if you did not do anything to remove or repaired infected files/ virus some virus's can make it so your antivirus cannot run properly which could be the reason why if you have been running one and it doesn't pick up that your still infected.

I never really cleaned/ repaired the virus

Disable your resystem restore and a doing a complete scanreg then remove the virus thats present then re-enabling your system restore and setting it back to pre-infected conditions is what you should do.
I would start with reinstalling your current antivirus to make sure all the comonants are still intact and do a complete scan including heuristic and ALL files. and see what you come up with.

[edka]

I had Norton at the time but never updated it once my subscription ran out. Since then I've just been using a free online virus scan which doesn't seem to pick up anything. Are there any good free antivirus programs? I think it will be too late to restore my system to how it was before the virus - its been over a year now and I've installed windows XP since then

[Tzaddi28thPath]

:cross Your still scaring me :cross

Go to either cnet or zdnet, get one of the programs and also a firewall, use them please. Do whatever the programs say to do when your done scanning which will probably be what I already suggested you do. You may lose some of your music and you may have to reinstall XP but hey :hole I'm sure we all have some cool undamaged virus free stuff we can share with you! Heh Heh....

I use Zone Alarm and Norton AntiVirus :P

[edka]

getting it now... thanks a lot, you've been very helpful!