Vendor and version information

When developing a program for the Windows platform it's possible to append additional information to files, such as what product the file belongs to, the product version, the file's version number, the company name of the developer, trademark information, etc. This information is available from Windows Explorer, by right-clicking on the file, choose Properties and then select the Version tab.

Most legitimate developers take the chance to properly describe their files. For example, the screenshot to the right shows the vendor and version information for firefox.exe, which is the executable file for the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser. This information is available for each file in the FreeFixer file database. For example, here's the version information for firefox.exe.

When there's no version available the following will appear on the file information page: This file does not have any version or vendor information. Missing version information does not necessarily mean that that the file is malicious, but I would recommend scanning it in one of the online virus scanners. reader_s.exe and prnet.tmp are examples of files that are missing version information.