Today Jim asks,

I installed a new hard drive in my computer and placed my old one as a spare. I had some pictures on the old hard drive that I would like to transfer to the new hard drive. When I click on the icon in my old hard drive where the pictures used to be I receive a little blue screen that says the file has been modified?? Also it shows that the file is now a PVD. What is a PVD and how to I open such a thing? Any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

That seems rather odd, to be honest. If I am not mistake, PVD a script extension is not even used any longer. So it sounds like something went south along the way. If it was me, I would do a careful scan of both hard drives to see if something malicious has happened someplace with malware in mind.

Again, being as I do have a screen shot or anything to really see what it looks like, I am leaning with something malicious converting images to executable scripts of some sort. This should be looked at very carefully with a good antivirus program immediate in my opinion.

Here is what I would do in no short order:

1. Update your existing anti-virus.
2. Make sure it is set to scan both hard drives.
3. Unplug the connection to the Internet in case data is being sent back and forth by something malware related.
4. Do a really deep scan, allow the program to take care of the problem.
5. Understand that it is highly possible that those images are likely gone.

Should the scan turn up nothing, then it could be some sort of corruption with the old file system on the old hard drive. You could use something like GetBackData to recover what it can from the potentially damaged hard drive. But I would check for malware before anything else if it was me.

This said, I also lean heavily on the community for their thoughts. Gnomies, any ideas that Jim might try in conjunction or even instead of my own thoughts? Hit the comments (please, I cannot forward on each email I receive to Jim) and give your ideas a shot.

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!” Please address comments to the comments section above, my email address is for questions – thanks!