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Old 11-06-2014, 07:46 PM
 
272 posts, read 302,579 times
Reputation: 215

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Anybody know the best/easiest way to repair/recover damaged pdf/html documents and files? Used a really terrible free antivirus (Avira) and got some REALLY BAD viruses on my computer. Now all my documents are unreadable. Both on my hard drive and on a usb. I've got hundreds of them!! Someone please help.
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Old 11-06-2014, 07:48 PM
 
39 posts, read 47,546 times
Reputation: 25
What do you mean when you say the documents are unreadable? Are you unable to log into Windows to access them, are they just looking like gibberish when you open them, or are you getting a message that they've been encrypted and you have to pay to retrieve them?
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Old 11-06-2014, 07:52 PM
 
Location: under the beautiful Carolina blue
22,651 posts, read 36,657,128 times
Reputation: 19848
I know a guy who can probably save them. He charges $50 if he can, nothing if he can't.

Phil @ Advantage Computer. He's an interesting character to boot.

advantagepcrtp.com
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Old 11-06-2014, 07:59 PM
 
272 posts, read 302,579 times
Reputation: 215
Quote:
Originally Posted by tanman1 View Post
What do you mean when you say the documents are unreadable? Are you unable to log into Windows to access them, are they just looking like gibberish when you open them, or are you getting a message that they've been encrypted and you have to pay to retrieve them?
When I click on the pdfs it says Adobe cannot open the file because it has been damaged. Wordpad looks like gibberish. Html docs are blank.
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Old 11-06-2014, 08:54 PM
 
Location: MidMichigan
119 posts, read 84,753 times
Reputation: 345
Default Virus eradication

Quote:
Originally Posted by ContainednCary View Post
Anybody know the best/easiest way to repair/recover damaged pdf/html documents and files? Used a really terrible free antivirus (Avira) and got some REALLY BAD viruses on my computer. Now all my documents are unreadable. Both on my hard drive and on a usb. I've got hundreds of them!! Someone please help.
Install and run MalwareBytes, then run a full scan with Avira to see if it finds any further malware/viruses.

"Free" antivirus doesn't equal terrible. Antiviruses can't stop what humans start by opening infected files/clicking on malware links. All an antivirus can do is clean up the mess after the fact.
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Old 11-07-2014, 04:35 PM
 
272 posts, read 302,579 times
Reputation: 215
This is what I get when I try to open pdfs in Word as well as Word docs themselves:

UOíœëa0‘vïÐdÈ
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Old 11-07-2014, 07:11 PM
 
621 posts, read 979,999 times
Reputation: 616
Try running the free anti-virus softwares. Perhaps one of them has a fix for the virus on your PC. Norton/ PC Doctor/ AVG/ etc.
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Old 11-07-2014, 08:40 PM
 
Location: Marlborough, MA
871 posts, read 3,014,264 times
Reputation: 958
Did you perform a System Restore? My recently infected-by malware/Trojans was corrected by that means. Then I ran malwarebytes and I am good as new.
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Old 11-09-2014, 01:49 AM
 
1,965 posts, read 3,298,829 times
Reputation: 1913
Quote:
Originally Posted by eloyfan View Post
Did you perform a System Restore? My recently infected-by malware/Trojans was corrected by that means. Then I ran malwarebytes and I am good as new.
Do this. It worked for me in a similar situation. Obviously you should also consider getting an external hard drive and backing up frequently.
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Old 11-09-2014, 06:02 AM
 
Location: Raleigh, NC
2,743 posts, read 4,810,755 times
Reputation: 3949
Quote:
Originally Posted by ContainednCary View Post
This is what I get when I try to open pdfs in Word as well as Word docs themselves:
UOíœëa0‘vïÐdÈü¶>elß?˳Òt²ìÈÆÑ ãÙùn5 .2uéè̇LëFBO=ã¥6ëJ*ÁЄî?]ž'Æí“ñ*#k¦‹g½öjjÙÃÇ5<Ã#À1Ì:ø™ ãÔ5wMíúٽ΢ P—µf["0[ï×êѝÏd7”Xk•+<ò—gŽYã¬Gã
FYI: PDFs opened in Word or Notepad or any another program that's not a PDF reader, will naturally show you gibberish. Information in a PDF is not stored as plain-text that you can read that way.

Just like you would get gibberish opening up a Word doc in a PDF reader.

But your Word Doc, opened up in Word, and being gibberish, is definitely a problem, (presuming you are distinguishing between the different Word formats, ie *.doc and not *.docx)
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