corrupt word doc/files

Recentlt i had and ectra 256 meg ram put on my pc Upon its returne I found 5 word folders with every word doc corrupted. they all had the same time and date in the modified section. None of the recovery tools online can recover the docs.. so far. Every time i try and open a document it opens in a mish mash of symbols. This is afetr microsoft akes me which program I want to open this file in although it is still a word doc. Other folders and word doc are fine Any Ideas??
Thanks

Steve (Australia)

 

Not to worry you are anything, but when exactly did this problem start?

I ask because there is a virus going around which corrupts (overwrites) several common document types, including Word documents, on the 3rd of every month:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/904420.mspx.

You mentioned every affected file had the same date modified- is it the 3rd or 4th of Febuary? Have you done any recent virus scans?

Now, I want to make it clear that I am certainly not sure it was this virus in question that caused the problem (that particular virus, I understand, was not well designed and not very effective on most systems, even those that were infected, so I might even classify it as a longshot), but because the virus basically overwrites good files with junk ones, if it is what caused your problem, those documents are probably not recoverable.

But like I said, I am definately not sure about this,so don't give up hope yet. I certainly hope I am wrong, because I always hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Anyway, check that date modifed, let us know if it is on or near the 3rd.

 

First thing I would do is a complete cleanup of your system. Adware, spyware and Antivirus. The Karma Sutra virus was apparently supposed to corrupt Word, Excel and Powerpoint docs and was supposed to start on the 03/02/2006, I hope for your sake you haven't got this.

Have you tried opening these docs in notepad?

Did these docs have a lot of embedded editting, e.g Chapters, table links, etc sometimes these factors can lead to corruption but generally not to the extent you are talking about.

One suggestion is to open the doc copy and paste into a new word doc (I don't think this will work as it sounds as though your's are to far gone, but I used to have success with this at uni when docs got corrupted and I would generally lose all editting but save the content.)

 

Sorry Gecks we posted at similar time didn't mean to reiterate what already stated.