I used a file, and all it did was pop up a dos screen for a second and vanished, nothing else.

I had scaned the file with an up to date Norton Antivirus first and it had seen nothing. After seeing the popup I did a full Norton scan as well as a Spy Sweeper one and both found nothing. I also looked at my stuff running in Task Manager, and looked at my msconfig, and found nothing unusual. Still, legit files don't just do a dos popup and nothing else...

Am I being paranoid, or could I have missed something?

Hmm, maybe you could try another antivirus, as well? i suggest AVG, I use that. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

That happens a lot, Luvian. I've run countless .exe files which show a DOS prompt screen for a second or sometimes longer. It's not a virus.

But it did nothing else... That's what's making me nervous...

What was it that you downloaded ?

If you think its a virus then you can submit it to Symantec using the instructions below.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...615501348?Open

There are plenty of .exe files that just pop up and disapear. most to do with extraction of files and things like that. I have had a few programs (mods and such) that act in a similar way.

If you give me the website you downloaded the software from I can have a look.

it was probably a corupt file, I have had them do that, then nothing else happens. you can delete it if it worries you, and have another scan run by other virus scanners. but you should be ok with just deleting the file.....

Nothing at all was installed or extracted, it wasn't an archive file.

It wouldn't let me delete it, it said it was used by another program.

I had to do it in command lines, and it didn't want to do it while windows explorer was open.

I'm going to sleep, I'll see if anything can be done when I get back from work tomorow.

<font color=cccccc>Are you by chance running XP? If so, you attempted to run a DOS .exe and that is all that will happen. Remember that the GUI for XP is NOT as DOS based, and therefore won't do much.

WinMe is very similar, as it was the lead out of the box away from DOS as a GUI.

Your que of 'it didn't want to do it while explorer was open' leads me back to it's really not an issue.</font>

Yes, I have Windows XP, and it was a DOS file.

Still, XP can use command line, and the file was labeled for Windows XP, I was certain it would work.

I'm happy it wasn't a virus, thanks for the info. [img]smile.gif[/img]