imsscott said:
So what you are saying is if your anti-virus software deletes a file
it is the user's responsibility to get that file replaced because it
could be a legitimate file name in Windows?
Actually, you should have your AV set to quarantine suspect files
until you are ready to deal with them. If it happened to be a legit
file that the AV couldn't clean, there is a chance that they might
add support for cleaning it in the future. Many people believe that
you should *never* clean infected files but should always replace
them from a known good backup. In this case it is still a very good
idea to quarantine rather than delete because sometimes an AV
program will falsely accuse a file of having malicious content.
Again, how would one find that out?
You could use Google to look for that file name to determine
if there is a legitimate Windows file by that name. However, it
would tell you nothing about the suspect file other than that it
has the same name as a legitimate Windows file.
There are sites on the web that not only will tell you that a file
name is used by a legitimate Windows file, but will also tell you
which .CAB file you can extract the legitimate file from.
How do you determine whether a file name matches a
legitimate file name in Windows?
See above - also you could search Microsoft's knowledge base.
Since I didn't find anything by that name anywhere, including
Microsoft and anti-virus sites, I am going to assume that there
is no legitimate mssmgrd.exe in Windows and I'm not going to
try and replace it with a "real" one.
Very good, but the fact that an AV deletes a file has nothing to
do with its legitimacy. The "delete" or "clean" has to do with the
inability (or ability) to extract a nefarious function from a program
file and yet still retain its original function. Your AV can sometimes
clean a virally "infected" program, and maybe even a program file
that has been modified non-virally such as "trojanized" programs,
or even some types of corrupted files (program or data).