These files just appeared for me today in a Premiere Pro CS4 project folder.  My first google searches seemed to indicate malware, but I think the sites saying that were actually trying to install malware.  More searching seems to indicate the files are created by a statistical analysis program, SPSS, specifically as a part of their licensing scheme.

See here:

http://spssx-discussion.1045642.n5.nabble.com/sysprs-and-lsprst-files- from-SPSS-14-and-15-td1075378.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS

I've never heard of SPSS before and certainly haven't installed the program myself.  One guess is that Premiere Pro uses SPSS internally, but I seriously doubt that.  More likely it's that Adobe's license manager uses the same system that SPSS uses for licensing.  This would appear to be SafeNet Sentinel:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=171435

So the appearance of these files certainly woke me up this morning.  (Apparent malware infections get my heart pounding.)  But it looks like they're nothing to worry about after all.

It would be nice if someone from Adobe would confirm this -- possibly in a KB article.

I should have said confirm or deny.

Thank you.  That's good information.  Can you explain the presence of these files then?

These files appeared again today in a new PP CS4 project folder.  They have now appeared in my last two project folders.  This is a new development.  I have a project that I last modified on August 15, and these files did not appear then, or in any projects before (that I know of).  And I don't think any of my CS4 apps have been updated in the last month, except maybe Flash Player.  I am running Vista Business 64-bit, as an administrator with UAC turned on, and this has never changed.

So why are they appearing now?  What is creating them?  What purpose do they serve?

Todd_Kopriva, if you or any other Adobe employees could shed some light on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff Bellune wrote:

 

Attempting to shed some light:

 

I found that files named  lsprst7.dll, tmpprst.dll and lsprst7.tgz are created in various places  on my hard drive. What's the matter with them?

 

These files are part of the persistence layer of the licensing  component used by SparkMaker. Usually these files are created once in  the
%WINDIR%\system32 folder, if the user has local administrative  privileges. If the user does not have local administrative privileges,  these files might be created in the directory containing the Office  document you have opened. In order to change this behaviour make sure  SparkMaker is executed once from a user having administrative  privileges. This user should have write access to the %WINDIR%\system32  folder.

 

You can extrapolate that information to apply to your system(s).  I suspect there is a piece of software on your system that uses the same licensing component as this SparkMaker (or as SafeNet) and that is what is generating the files.  These files have been discussed here before, and SafeNet was one likely source of the files.  Regardless, it's not Pr or any CS5 suite app.

 

-Jeff

That's what it was looking like to me too.  But Todd_Kopriva seemed to shoot that theory down (reply #8).  Hopefully he will elaborate on what their actual purpose is, what is creating them and why.

Jeff Bellune wrote:

 

Hopefully he will elaborate on what their actual purpose is, what is creating them and why.

Why do you think he would know?  As I mentioned in the last sentence of my previous post, they're not being generated by any Adobe software component.  Only you can determine which piece of software on your system is generating the files.

 

-Jeff

I'm hoping he knows more since he responded fairly quickly with a pretty definitive (albeit brief) answer.  So it appears that he is knowledgeable about this topic.

And I have to think they are being generated by Premiere Pro, or some other Adobe component, because the files are created at the same time as the folders "Adobe Premiere Pro Preview Files" and "Encoded Files" in the project folder.  This is when I am opening an existing prproj file (a copy of an older project file) in a new (empty) folder.

Btw, I never mentioned that I scanned the files and the folder with Security Essentials and it declared them clean.  That certainly doesn't mean they're not actually malware of some kind, but I thought I should mention it.

Todd_Kopriva wrote:

 

I'm knowledgeable about what licensing software we use. The licensing software named on this thread is not it. I have no idea what is putting those files on your computer.

Thank you for elaborating.  I will continue to search for the answer on my own.  (I'm thinking of some traces using some Sysinternals tools.)  I'll post back here if I find out anything.

Well I definitely need to do some more digging, but here's what Sysinternals Process Monitor is showing:

- If I start PP by opening a project file from Windows Explorer, "Adobe Premiere Pro.exe" looks for sysprs7.dll, sysprs7.tgz, etc in the project directory, then creates them, then accesses them.

- If I start PP by running it from the Start Menu (with no project file), "Adobe Premiere Pro.exe" looks for those files in both C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and in C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.  (They are present in SysWOW64 -- but not in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.)

So Premiere Pro is definitely involved, but I realize it accesses lots of components, some of which are third-party, like QuickTime, Matrox, etc.  So I guess it could be some other component that "Adobe Premiere Pro.exe" is loading that is creating and accessing these files.

I did update QuickTime on 8/31 (to 7.6.7).  I wonder if that's related.

I'll dig deeper next week.

JSS1138 wrote:

 

I don't have Quicktime installed either.  That is not the likely culprit.

That's good to know.  I think that's the only thing that's changed on my system since these files started appearing for me -- other than Microsoft updates.  Hmm...