Weird File Corruption
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                Viet Norm
            
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        Published on 2012-11-14T16:10:06Z
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            2012/11/14
            17:07 UTC
        
        
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My Windows 8 broke few days ago and I had to reinstall it (see Can't boot Windows 8). Afterwards, I found some corrupt files on C drive. Ok, it happens, but this is really weird. Corrupt files seem to contain stuff from Windows registry. For example, this is beginning of one of the corrupt files:
hbin `                        PÿÿÿT h i s   z o n e   c o n t a i n s   w e b   s i t e s   t h a t   y o u   t r u s t   n o t   t o   d a m a g e   y o u r   c o m p u t e r   o r   y o u r   f i l e s
...
I googled and found that 'hbin' often refers to "hive bin" of Windows registry. Then I searched the registry for the readable part of corrupt data, and found the text in some registry value (not the text above, but something I found in another corrupt file. I'm assuming the above is also from registry).
My question is, how could this happen? Was it a virus, or did Windows somehow corrupt these files while attempting to repair itself?
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