From: Calvert
E-mail:
Date: 07 Jan 2005
Time: 12:54:16
After doing a little more searching on Google about this today, looks like there are probably some fairly innocent ways the autoexec.nt file (et al) could be inadvertantly deleted your system once. In these cases, simply replacing the file(s) as discussed in my previous post ought to put the matter to rest. However it also looks like there are at least a couple of malware (virus/trojan/spyware/adware) programs out there that will delete the autoexec.nt file in particular, and keep deleting it every time you restart your computer if you put it back.
One quick and dirty fix that seems to work in some of these latter cases is to simply set the file to read-only after replacing it. But if you're seeing one or more of these files getting deleted again after having been replaced, looks like there's a high probablity your machine could be infected with something nasty.
For example: http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_AGOBOT.GY
So if you see this happening over and over, I would really recommend getting to the bottom of the problem rather than just putting a band-aid on it.