Disappearing Video Icon - Virus?

I downloaded a video and saw the icon pop up on my desktop as it began to UnRar. Once it downloaded, the icon disappeared. Anyone know whether I just downloaded a virus? How the hell do I get this video off my hard drive if I can't find it?

marcelhobbyist wrote:

You mention downloading a file and unpacking the file using WinRAR but you follow that by saying 'once it downloaded'. Did you mean to say 'once WinRAR was finished unpacking the file'? The video icon always disappears when WinRAR determines an archive to be corrupt leaving WinRAR unable to finish the attempt to write the file to disk. But I assume you would already know that from previous experience using WinRAR.

But why do you say that you suspect a virus? Personally I would suspect a trojan since they are more useful to the sender than a virus, but in either case dont you have anti-virus and firewall software on your box? There are a lot of good free apps out there if cost is an issue. Especially when you regularly download files from otherwise strangers.

Abraxas wrote:

Thanks for the response, Abraxas. Well, generally, when and as the file UnRars, the new icon for the video appears. Once it finishes UnRaring, the new icon is my movie, right? In this particular case, the new icon disappeared once the UnRar completed.

Maybe my antivirus/firewall caught it but I'd still like to go looking for the little bugger. I've seen something like this in the past where I was able to play the file but needed to UnRar each time to play it as opposed to saving the video to a drive with the first UnRar and never having to UnRar it again.

Is there such a thing as a Trojan Finder? No condom jokes, please.

make sure you can see hidden files. file may be hidden

try unraring again into a specific folder.

scan the rar with virus scanner

open the rar and see what the file name is and try searching for it

insure the file didn't just overwrite another file with the same name

make sure you are talking about a thumb file