Event File

I am running Windows Vista Business on a Dell Vostro 420 4.00GB 32 bit operating system and have recently encountered a problem.

Files have suddenly appeared as EVENT files (.event), some are hidden files & sometimes they show up within a folder of the same name, they are always empty 0 bytes. I have searched the internet and most searches refer to event logs but this is not the same problem, these are files that have appeared on my computer some of which mirror existing folders, others are folders which I am sure previously had data in, mostly scanned photo's which seem to have disappeard, one website indicated that .event may be an unknown extension but all these EVENT files were folders I had saved and named myself not downloaded ones.

Does anyone have any idea what they are please?

Try a couple of scans.
Malwarebytes
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

Tutorial thanks to Brink

I am running Windows Vista Ultimate x64. Current setup has been running about 8 months. I am experiencing the same thing. Check disk says there are problems with sectors on the disk. I am finding .event files where there use to be folders and files. Predominately in my stored picture files.

I have no idea what is causing this. I have been compiling slide shows and videos using various programs over the past week. I am using Corel Video Studio Pro V3. I have also used Adobe Media Encoder C4. I have used Nero burning Rom version 10, I have also used the Windows built in video production programs. I do not know if these are causing the problem.

I ran a search for *.event files and found 65 items. With the exception of a few mis-guided finds (like com.adobe.versioncue.wire.event_4.0.1.jar) the rest of them were picture or video processing files. Apparently, when a slide show or video processor locks up, or gets interrupted in process, these files are created. I suspect that Corel Video Studio Pro is the biggest offender.

Thanks for replying, I did a malware & Norton scan but nothing relevant was found I have several photo editing programmes downloaded including Corel but had mostly been using google's Picassa which I removed in case this was causing the problem but the event files were still there.

On further investigation I found that EVERY single folder and all subfolders on my computer, including those that did not contain photos, had these 'hidden .event files' with 0bytes and every single one referred to the same date and time apart from a few minutes variation, with this in mind and because of other references online I searched the event viewer by the date and an error just prior to the time on them did come up which referred to 'a failure to create resore point on volume' interestingly the process information also referred to Corel Digital Studio this was 'appdata\local\corel\corel digital studio 2010\cds\runtime\dxnov2007\dxsetup.exe digital studio 2010\ cds\runtime\dxnov2007\dxsetup.exe"/silent: I not have any technical knowledge so this means nothing to me and the Windows online link from the event viewer did not recognise it either.

As I have not been able to find an explanation or purpose for them I have systematically deleted them from all of my folders and they have not come back, I may have lost some of my photo's but all other information in the folders is still there. I hope this helps anyone else with the same problem

Sounds like you both have a problem with the Coral software.
Was it legally downloaded?
If so you might need to contact Coral Help.

I purchased a copy 2 years ago and never had this problem, of course I was running Win XP Pro at that time.

I am running Vista Ultimate now and I purchased the newest version of Corel VideoStudio Pro X3 about 2 months ago.

I also went through my hard drive and deleted all the 0byte .event files. So far they have not reappeared. I will watch for them next time I use Corel.

I am very happy to have discovered the postings here about the 0 byte ".event" files named after the containing directory because the suspicions I had about the possible culprit are confirmed!

Some weeks back I started looking for a video editor in order to edit films created by my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZX3 digital camera that can produce AVCHD Lite video films in HD quality (720p). I tested several open source and shareware products. Because I am very careful about not infecting my laptop I only download .EXE files from the original developer sites or from reputed download sites. My Firefox browser uses the WOT add-on to help me visit only reputed sites, not sites that want to infect my computer.

One of the video editors I downloaded was Corel Video Studio Express 2010 that I downloaded from here: LINK REMOVED on July 27 2010. Some days later, I installed the program. When I started it and before I got any usable GUI on the screen I got confronted with a very unusual request of the type "do you want Corel Video Studio to scan your hard drive for video films?". Never saw another video editing program asking that. I replied "NO" but instead of getting the application GUI right away to allow me to work with the program I got nothing and saw the hard disk light burning continuously as it happens when some program is scanning your hard disk. After some time, perhaps 30 seconds or so I decided that I don't want this kind of program and I killed the program using TaskManager, because the GUI had not yet appeared. After that I uninstalled the program using Windows 7 "Programs and Features".

Several days later I noticed for the first time that lots of directories and sub-directories had been filled with the 0-byte ".event" files, with the HIDDEN attribute ON and named after the name of the parent directory where the ".event" file was located. Whole directory trees had been processed this way. Another very annoying thing was that the directory time stamps had been changed from the original creation date and time to the date and time July 30, 1:43 PM or 1:44 PM. In any case there was a match between the time stamp of the directory and the created empty ".event" file. Not all the directory trees had been infected by the "worm" that did this. Thus I assume that the culprit had been interrupted in its work otherwise it could had infected more directories.

After I discovered this I scanned the laptop with MalwareBytes and SuperAntySpyware, not to find any thing other than the less dangerous marketing spy cookies.

Because I remember that Corel Video Studio Express wanted to scan my laptop for films, even before I got the GUI on the screen, what I consider abusive behavior, I had strongly suspected that it could be the culprit. Thus today I googled for the name Corel and the empty event files and I found this thread.

As I see that other victims also have installed Corel software, given the express desire of the program to scan one's computer before the program can be used, I assume it is the culprit. This can be tested by trying the program on a test computer... Perhaps somebody has the time to do that.


I had several hundreds of .event files in several directory trees. To remove them manually would be a time consuming task. But I use Total Commander as file manager (in my opinion the most powerful tool one can have in a PC) and I could delete the hundreds of "event" files from each directory tree by searching for "*.event" files, generating a list of all the found files and deleting all the files in the list. I would not know how to do that using Windows Explorer!

NOTE:
I see that the link to the location where I had downloaded the program from has been deleted by the moderator of this forum. As I am new to this forum (I only joined today in order to make this posting) I don't know the rules of the site about mentioning links to other pages. In any case, I want to mention that the LINK I have mentioned is referring to the corel dot com site (the producer of the product) and the page is the download page for the 30 days evaluation version of the product. What I want to say is that I did not download it form same shabby site but from the reputed site from the Corel company. I would appreciate if someone has the time to download and test this program and check if it does what I suspect it does.
The download is 781,43 Mb, an enormous size if compared to many other shareware video editors that do about the same and are only 20 or 30 Mb in size. This is thus a typical example of bloatware.

There is another forum with a thread concerning this problem. I have posted a message there about my suspicions concerning Corel software. Contributor Dark.an9el of that forum has tested my suspicion by downloading Corel Video Studio Express 2010 and installing it in a test environment (under vmware). He confirms that the installed Corel program has infected directories with the hidden empty ".event" files, thus the mystery is solved! He told me that he has made a video of the happening and will publish a link to it in the forum. Anyone interested in the findings of that contributor should go to the page that you can reach by writing http:// followed by windows.ittoolbox.com//groups/technical-functional/windows-7-l/event-file-extension-0-byte-file-3515876. If this link info is removed (why would you do that, this is very useful info for everybody) you can fill the words corel video studio express event file extension 0 byte file in your Google search entry and should get that thread on top.

i have been killing myself for two days on this.
I finally found an answer!
It's not Corel Video studio pro that's doing this. It's DVD factory pro 2010 (which comes bundled with video studio pro). The reason i know this is because i have been using Video Studio pro for some time now & these files have never showed up. Two days ago, I decided to make a DVD using DVD Factory pro (never used this before). I imported video's from two folders, and the event files immediately showed up (only in those two folders & their subfolders).
I think im gonna call corel...

This is the reply I received from Corel Customer Services which confirms what these mysterious .event files are, hope this helps everyone else.

Thank you for your e-mail. Please be advised that .event file is a hidden file and is automatically created once a folder in your hard drive has been cataloged by Corel Digital Studio, PaintShop Photo Express, etc. Corel Digital Studio creates a thumbnails of the images stored in a folder and the .event file monitors the changes inside that folder (removing and adding photos, etc.). When Corel Digital Studio is installed on your computer, the .event file will be added to each folder with stored media files in it.

Regards,
Allan
Corel Customer Service