For the security conciuos: a question :)

[mrducking]

So, today at lunch, the main pc where i work died in the most bizarre way i have ever seen before.
At a specific point, more precisely 14:15 CET, the computer shut down every single executable.
The computer was restarted. Everything stopped working, windows loaded but thats it.
At around 15:30 CET, after checking for the obvious posible reasons (circuit loop with charge that it shouldnt have>unplug and press the turn on button for a few seconds, spike in power....) i restart it.
Oh ye, damnable beast fromth hellth! Something erased, as in completely erased almost all the *.exe files in the PC >> (my face after checking it)
Sooo, have any of you know of a virus that does this or something similar? Has someone seen anything even remotely similar to this problem?
I'm pretty baffled about it and was wondering if someone had seen this before.

Cheers

PS: Oh the rage! So much rage!

 

[Spuff]

I got a virus several years ago that tried to erase as much on my system drive as it could. Not much would work or open but I luckily was able to do enough to back up my mails and bookmarks. So, yes, some viruses do aim to delete or cripple your executables.

 

[Androcles]

As Spuff sais, yeah it happens, there are a few viruses out there that do this, fortunately they're quite rare, most viruses are aimed more towards keeping your system intact and stealing information, a vast majority of them are actually harmlessly farming marketing data. It's always best to back up your system regularly in case anything like this happens, I'd especially keep multiple backups over time just in case you backed up a virus, believe me it makes it so much easier to restore if something does happen.

 

[ubuysa]

These days viruses are usually much more subtle, deleting all .exe files is also tricky to do since Windows will have many of them open (and thus a locked file handle). I'd suspect the disks first, so run chkdsk /r on them. I'd also run Memtest on the RAM overnight.

A clean reinstallation is clearly required (or a disk image restore) so I'd check the hardware first. I'm not yet convinced it has to be malware.

 

[mrducking]

These days viruses are usually much more subtle, deleting all .exe files is also tricky to do since Windows will have many of them open (and thus a locked file handle). I'd suspect the disks first, so run chkdsk /r on them. I'd also run Memtest on the RAM overnight.

A clean reinstallation is clearly required (or a disk image restore) so I'd check the hardware first. I'm not yet convinced it has to be malware.

yeah. im checking it now and im thinking much the same, specially because it's the second time something like happened (this same PC died during summer but i wasnt here to check it, so i dont know exactly what happened and wht they did to fix it)
meanwhile as a temporary fix im reinstalling a few basic program to backup everything (browser, access(got to save a database older than christ with a software that can be named wihout a doubt the worst written till now)...)
i will start running tests to see what i got here

will update soon

 

[mrducking]

update: im currently testing the ram and so far no errors on 40%
i found out that all the exe that got deleted were all running when the problem arouse: chrome, windows processes, office, TPV software
so im trying to find out what could do this being as it only affected the things on the ram, everything else was left untouched
any ideas on the direction to follow to find this pain in the back will be greatly apreciated (besides the obvious one: the ram is faulty)