Visual Studio - VS .Net 2003 Install Weirdness, searches my HD for odd software, and then tries to in

Author

VS .Net 2003 Install Weirdness, searches my HD for odd software, and then tries to in

brian.campbell.jr@gmail.com

2005-08-30, 3:56 am

I really need some help, I'm having a very, very strange problem.

I bought a copy of Visual Studio .Net 2003 (Academic Edition) and am
trying to install it. It's a legitimate copy, I bought it at the
university bookstore (major university), and it certainly appears to be
legit.

I put in CD 1 and it says I need to put in the Prerequisite CD. So, I
put in that and click OK, and after a brief pause it begins to install
a Synaptics touch pad driver (and the language being shown for
buttons/etc. is French, maybe Spanish). I quit that install, since I
don't want to install that. And so I can't install VS. But, wait, it
gets really weird.

I at first thought that maybe some leftover install from the mouse
driver was causing it, maybe somehow there was a leftover setup file in
the temp directory that VS setup was using, and somehow this triggered
it, so I cleared out everything. Problem remained. Then I ran System
Internals FileMonitor to watch and see what files the setup program was
using, thinking maybe it was reading some temp file somewhere else i
didn't delete. ANd instead what I found was even weirder. The setup
program on CD 1 is searching my hard disk for very, very odd things.
It's searching for hundreds and hundreds of files, and it's not
searching in paths that make any sense, they are paths off of temp
directories or off of a couple other directories I created in other
parts of the disk. Here are a few odd examples, some look sinister,
some look harmless. In all cases the file monitor shows FILE NOT FOUND
since it's looking in stupid places, and never appears to look in legit
places:

C:\installed\7.13.2.0\COMANDOS\VIDEO\H_Afri.avi PATH NOT FOUND
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\data\SO
FTBALL.EXE
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\Cliffor
d_Reading.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\BUZZ1ST
.hlp
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\ASAttuneSwitch.exe
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\Setup\Dino\HD\Dino.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\EnterNe
t.ini
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\HEROES\
EDITOR.EXE
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\english
\win95\OEMUSB.exe
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\SETUP\speedkey.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\SETUP\s
peedkey.exe
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\camware\camware.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\camware
\camware.exe
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\camware\camware.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\camware
\camware.exe
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\QuickCam\QuickCam.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\PGPdisk
.exe
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\Custom\Custom_cowboy.psd
C:\DOCUME~1\bjcamp\LOCALS~1\Temp\pc\ammo
\GRENADE\ammo.qvm
C:\installed\7.13.2.0\Symantec Ghost.Msi

Most of the instances are for harmless files, but some obviously look
suspicious (PGP? Camera software?). So, my basic question is, what is
going on? Why is the Visual Studio setup looking for these things? It
seems to occur during its component check, but how would most of these
items count/matter?

It all makes me very worried that it's some sort of trojan or virus or
something, but Norton says nothing, and file monitor doesn't show any
suspicious disk writes. And it's a legit VisualStudio .NET 2003 copy.

Thanks for any insights...

I'm totally

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