Microsoft acknowledged late Wednesday the existence of a zero-day exploit for Windows Metafile images, and said it was looking into ways to better protect its customers. Even worse, by the end of the day nearly 50 variants of the exploit had already appeared. One security company said the possibilities were endless on how the flaw could be exploited. 'This vulnerability can be used to install any type of malicious code, not just Trojans and spyware, but also worms, bots or viruses that can cause irreparable damage to computers,' said Luis Corrons of Panda Software.
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Member since:2005-06-29
Deleting important system files isn't a bright idea, I figure the name shimgvw.dll stands for something like shell image video (don't know what the w would stand for besides "windows").
Most likely after deleting that many of your windows applications would refuse to start complaining that the dll is missing, especially dialogs with animated pictures and web browsers with their animated throbbers.
But then that's just my guess, go ahead and experiment if that's what you want. My warning will still be here for everyone else to read and I can only guess what would happen if you delete that DLL.
Member since:2005-06-29
You're not supposed to delete it. You run a command which unregisters it. Unless this is a different fix than I've read in other stories.
You can register it later.
We'd probably all be better off if people just unregistered all dll's associated with Microsoft file types; then people'd be forced to save things in formats which they can actually view on other systems.
Member since:2005-12-31
Member since:2005-11-13
Don't delete this, I've heard that it causes all sorts of problems.
IE: You won't be able to thumbnail and will have problems with JPG files, + some applications may crash.
Actually, unregistering/deleting this file is one of the first things I do after installing XP, and have notice no bad side effects from doing so (though I have my own apps registered for viewing images). I originally got the idea from here:
http://www.monroeworld.com/pchelp/tweakxp.php#14
Member since:2006-01-01
Member since:
2005-06-29
So there's a very critical flaw, that could potentially be exploited by ANY (?) web page and there's no fix yet?
Edit: Oh, I see that deleting SHIMGVW.DLL may possibly help.
Edited 2005-12-31 17:44