all my video file ext have changed

[wessa1]

hello,
have about 50 video files on my system,various ext's loke avi,dvd,mpeg and always used to watch them through vlc which is a great player.however they no longer play.when i look at properties for each video they are coming up as msinfo ext's which i beleive represents a document type.
not sure whats gone on or how i can convert them back to original format ,would like to da as a batch if possible,any ideas most welcome.
thank you
wessa

[Staff]

No idea why the files changed. That would be something on your system; maybe some new software you installed or an action taken with unintended consequences.

It's likely that the files just go renamed and not changed if they are all their original file size. In that case you need to identify what the file type was originally and rename the file to that file type by changing the file extensions.

This will be a manual process. Use Gspot to figure out the CODEC involved and that should give you an idea of what the file type (extension) should be and/or use TrID to identify the file type. More details in the FAQs...

http://filext.com/faq/using_codecs_view_video.php
http://filext.com/faq/research_file_type.php

[Durandal]

And maybe get a free AVG virus scan while your at it..

[wessa1]

thanks guys,will give g-spot a go,but looking at some files i think file sizes have been changed,if i select one as an example file size is now only 8 kb (holy crap me thinks)

[Staff]

Yes. If the file has changed size then it's quite possible that you do have some form of malware that has replaced the videos with itself in the effort to remain on your system by reinstalling itself any time you attempt to play one of the files. Some of that malware is kind enough to move the actual video to another location so you can still recover it but most such malware writers are not that considerate.

Yet another reason, with hard disk prices being as low as they are, to NEVER go without having a good backup that is not always connected to the system.