The Mitsubishi Pajero Owners Club®

bob cole · Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 20:05 Post subject: ECC FORMAT

Just recently, not sure when, a lot of my files seemed to have changed to ECC from rich text, I think, and I can no longer read them in Wordpad, It looks like japaneese or something like Hieroglyphics.
Anyone help, please?

bob

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peteinchad · Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 20:10 Post subject:

Have you tried changing the extension to .rtf or .txt

bob cole · Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 21:38 Post subject:

not sure how to do that. Sad

bob

peteinchad · Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:48 Post subject:

Right click on the file and you will see a menu pop up. Choose "rename" and the just change the ECC to txt or rtf - don't forget you need the dot as well.

bob cole · Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 12:45 Post subject:

Tried that, didn't do anything for my problem, is it possibly a virus at work?

Text documents show as ECC File and open as below. dontknow

úùr÷jˆu‘e•VÞÉÙÙÐMÅÍ¿m$CÑ{˜ì-ŒmŸR³ëMV-<{EÐ…"ÿëm ,¾ÀæÏÕâZ˜úÏÂ\LÚ¹Ùƒ\>WÃKifÁíôx¬ 3#èËÃ…ÿÞIosÊñ<aòÕ˜hz”ºâ åAœ¨•ËÛ™QÇ•d¢w—Ó <F¾€Ñ…Ñ—c\§.>º<ïÃÈøˆF-•\ËÑ$Á>Éï—CV¬Ÿï?Y-ÿøcws;$ûø²{+°ˆiXÊóÖ¤é[ü!qÀ}`H{vV¡}Å?Ÿ¤`¿1}¹ !a…ž>Ié3µî.étQ

bob

mimauk · Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 13:01 Post subject:

found this using google. the first post is very long but scroll down and you will get to the solutions.

https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?/topic/165302-pictures-video-file-extensions-changed-to-ecc/

bob cole · Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 10:46 Post subject:

mimauk---Did not really understand all that, Did it really say that my effected files were toast ?
I think most of them were backed up on spare drives in caddies, so I have deleted them. According to Malawarebytes I was infected with Binkiland A.
Quarentined 545 files, then deleted them all.

bob

mimauk · Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:47 Post subject:

Yes your affected files are toast. If you have backups for them then just delete the affected ones and keep the backups off the PC until you need them.

If you just use that machine for browsing the internet and not for serious downloading from newsgroups etc. - I would give serious consideration to binning the windows OS and using Linux Mint OS for your browsing. It looks more or less like a windows desktop and should not take a lot to get used to it.

You can download a copy of Mint (its free) and burn it to a dvd disc. Load the disc into your disc drive and then reboot your PC/laptop and you can then run Mint from the disc without it loading onto the machine. You can play about with it, go on the internet etc. until you get used to it and if you decide you like it you can then load it onto your machine as a dual boot system - it does it all for you - and have the option of both OS.

My main desktop is dual boot and my laptop is Mint.