Hi neilpatrick7:
You might be able to find additional information on afile.exe using Microsoft Sysinternals' free Process Explorer. Just unzip the downloaded ProcessExplorer.zip file and double-click on the procexp.exe executable to launch - there's no installation required.
You can get detailed information on afile.exe by configuring Process Explorer as follows:
- Enable Options | TotalVirus.com and Options | Verfify Image Signature - this activates automatic file analysis with VirusTotal.com from inside Process Explorer (see here for additional information).
- Enable View | Select Columns | Process Image | Image Path - this displays the path to the file.
- Close and re-start Process Viewer.
Then check the details for afile.exe, paying special attention to the Version, Path, Verified Signer and Virus Total columns. A high detection rate in the Virus Total column (e.g., 15/50) means that several different antivirus programs have previously analyzed a file with the identical signature (hash tag) and found it to be suspicious.
If Process Explorer finds afile.exe in a temp folder like C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp\ and/or it's not signed by a well-known software manufacturer, I would definitely be suspicious as files named afile.exe have been known to be associated with re-directors to malware-hosting sites like infoblasters.com - see the Comodo analysis here for one example.
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MS Windows 32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 27.0.1* IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40 * Process Explorer v. 16.01
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS