Unexpected changes

Hi everyone, Could anyone offer a little insight as to ways to determine what exactly is changed about a file or what did the changing if you receive a warning that is unexpected? Recently installed a screensaver that was not very well-behaved. Got warnings about checksums changes to various monitored files such as virusscanner and Spyblocker and several others. Scans by Norton and TDS came up empty, as well as checks with several utilities that I use on this system. Do not think this was any kind of false warning as the same thing happened on several tries. Goback was used to turn the clock back between installs, so each install was fresh. Eventually dumped saver. This was easy as the originator of the problem was known, but in the event there is a problem with an unknown entity, a little knowledge could maybe save a lot of aggravation! TIA.

 

Unfortunately, that is currently not a feature that is implemented into FileChecker - it would take a while, but I'll go ahead and see what I can do.

In general, if you kept getting the reports after installing the screensaver - over and over and over - it was probably the screen saver doing it. (I'm glad you could determine what was causing the changes.)
Was the only thing you saw checksum changes? In that case, SOMETHING changed in those files but all file attributes stayed the same. (That is NOT a good sign - this typically means something, probably the screen saver, was trying to edit those files so that nothing would notice the change.)

Regards,

-Javacool

 

Hi javacool, sorry for such a late reply. Just getting back up to speed after a reformat. Even zeroed out the hard drive to make sure everything was squeaky clean. Had a lot of other things going on, so took me a while to get around to getting computer back up to date. Just to update my situation, don't know if there was something crawling around in this computer before or not, but it certainly isn't now for sure. Thanks for reply and advice.

 

Scanning started at: 11:34:47 PM
   (11:35:05 PM)
   Creation Date Change --> C:\Program Files\FileChecker\filechecker.exe
   (11:35:08 PM)
   Modified Date Change --> C:\Program Files\FileChecker\filechecker.exe This happened immediately after adding an executable to be scanned(possible coincidence). As near as I can tell, there was no change. Checked properties and, also using Goback application, the revision history. Any ideas as to possible operator error, or a bug? Program seems to work just fine as always. TIA.

 

Unfortunately, because of the way FileChecker works you will encounter this scenario if and only if you add the filechecker executable to the FileChecker watchlist (and even then, only in certain circumstances and only on certain version of Windows). But because of this issue, adding the filechecker executable to the FileChecker watchlist is currently not supported.

Future versions of FileChecker will hopefully include a separate program to monitor the FileChecker process and executable (and will also warn you about adding the FileChecker executable to the watch list).

Regards,

-Javacool

 

Thanks for the info. Will remove filechecker executable from the list. Good programs and good support, doesn't get much better than that.