TROJAN alert during DL of Neverwinter Nights ? (nwhak.exe)

[Dementia5 認知症]

This has never happened before with me. Not trying to stir a panic, but my AV halted the Steam download of NWN with a pop-up:

Harmful File - Removed (nwhak.exe)

I believe this is the hak editor for the game. I had to restart the PC. As of now the DL is resuming (and just finished at time of writing).

I will return with an update. Could be nothing, but if others have seen this your input would be of value to me. As a precaution, I would prefer to advance after getting hearing from you folks.

I have a new gaming rig since I last played this, and after BD's recent update with the lighting enhancements am interested in getting this going again.

[DrLoboto]

To me that sounds like a false alert due to the file's suspicious name (**hak.exe). No guarantees, but I'd be surprised if it was truly infected. What AV are you using?

[Dementia5 認知症]

F-Secure. Says it was removed during the download, probably safe to continue with the install process. But I've been burned before so I'm hoping I get more additional feedback from the community

[Proleric]

Avast had no problem with the download, but did interrupt the first toolset launch for a while before deciding it was OK.

It allowed nwhak to run normally.

[Dementia5 認知症]

Can someone tell me where this "nwhak.exe" is located? I can at least quarantine it, to see if effects gameplay. Again, my AV did its job and deleted the file, but I want to check the directory first hand in case I need to repeat the process.

[DrLoboto]

I think nwhak.exe is just to open and compile hakpaks if you're a module builder. If you only want to play and don't want to create your own adventures, or if you only want to build simple adventures without any additional community content, you might not even need nwhak.exe, and the game probably won't miss it either, as it's an independent tool that you run from your desktop, not the game.

For me (GOG version) it's located in the NWN folder/util/win32 (if you bought the game on Steam and for Windows, that NWN folder might be in Programs(x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common or something like that).

[Heinz234]

The file is in ...\steamapps\common\Neverwinter Nights\util\win32
And indeed, DrLoboto is right.
It's a tool for opening/extracting and compiling hakpacks.
You don't need it to play the game.

[Dementia5 認知症]

Thanks all. Soon as I'm done playing weekend warrior around the house I'm going to log on tonight, see if the main campaign and Prisoners of the Mist loads and works the way I remember. Hopefully improved, given the horsepower of my new rig.

[Tesseract]

AV flags false positives all the time. Ask F-Secure to investigate, and if your file is not in fact infected with malware (which is probably the case) they should update their definitions so it won't be flagged in future.

[William Draco]

Note the file got moved from /util to /bin as part of the patch. Might have contributed as to why it freshly triggered.

Others are right to say that it's an independent program to help manage the creation of hak custom content files. No harm to the game if you delete it.

[Pumpkin]

Yeah if you're a player and won't ever bother with custom content making or running servers, it's not a problem if you don't have that at all, it's just a standalone tool.

[Dementia5 認知症]

Much obliged, folks!