Outlook saving emails as weird text files on mapped drive

[elmurado]

Hi all, we run WinXp clients with Outlook 2003 on them.
We have a few users who are getting a very strange problem. Files in the
format
S3ko.1
S3ko.2
S3ko.3
....
S3ko.9
Or it could s3fg.1 ... etc

These are ppearing on a file server under the user's home drive. We do not
use Exchange and the pst files are held locally.
I can't work out whether this is a virus or some form of malware but it is a
specific security issue because; 1. These files are actually readable in
notepad etc as email messages including header of the email. There are as
many of these files as there are emails in the inbox. Emails just turning up
somewhere that they're not meant to, is weird and slightly chilling.
2. When monitoring the open files on the server it is apparent that each
file is held open(most likely by Outlook) and so the concurrent open files on
the sevrer grows to such a point that a DOS occurs on that file server-ie no
new connections can be made, no legit files can be opened.

Why would Outlook do something like this-is it by design or is there
something else?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Outlook doesn't do this. Some virus scanners that integrate with Outlook
have this effect though. Disable it integration with Outlook and try again.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003


-----
Hi all, we run WinXp clients with Outlook 2003 on them.
We have a few users who are getting a very strange problem. Files in the
format
S3ko.1
S3ko.2
S3ko.3
....
S3ko.9
Or it could s3fg.1 ... etc

These are ppearing on a file server under the user's home drive. We do not
use Exchange and the pst files are held locally.
I can't work out whether this is a virus or some form of malware but it is a
specific security issue because; 1. These files are actually readable in
notepad etc as email messages including header of the email. There are as
many of these files as there are emails in the inbox. Emails just turning up
somewhere that they're not meant to, is weird and slightly chilling.
2. When monitoring the open files on the server it is apparent that each
file is held open(most likely by Outlook) and so the concurrent open files
on
the sevrer grows to such a point that a DOS occurs on that file server-ie no
new connections can be made, no legit files can be opened.

Why would Outlook do something like this-is it by design or is there
something else?

 

[elmurado]

thanks roady-I will try that and see if symantec have any record of this
issue occurring.
I've just noticed that another machine had these files sent to the c:\
drive. and by the look of them, it would appear that they are all inbound
mail.
I'll run filemon too and see what is going on hopefully.

 

[Ross]

Hi
I have the same problem as Emurad. The files added to my C: drive look like.

S3ko.1
S3ko.2
S3ko.3
....
S3ko.9
Or it could s3fg.1 ... etc

Anybody have any ideas... Could it be Microsoft Outlook (I run MS Outlook 2000) or is it some sortof MalWare. I run Symantec AntiVirus 2006 and have negative problems to date. It's just these damned files.

Can anyone help......
Ross

EggHeadCafe.com - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

it could be anything - are you scanning email as it arrives? open the folder
where they appear side-by-side with outlook - do a send/receive and see if
more are created.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I have the same problem as Emurad. The files added to my C: drive
look like.

S3ko.1
S3ko.2
S3ko.3

Other postings here indicate this is a Symantec problem. Di not scan
incoming mail with your antivirus program. It's unnecessary and causes
unwanted side-effects.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Other postings here indicate this is a Symantec problem. Di not scan
incoming mail with your antivirus program. It's unnecessary and
causes unwanted side-effects.

That should say "Do not scan..."