If a corrupted file shows no evidence of a virus and no evidence of intentional alteration, what conclusion can be offered?

• A. The cause of the file's corruption is unknown.
• B. The corruption was caused by hardware failure.
• C. The corruption was caused by a virus.
• D. The file was never corrupted.

Answer: (A)

When corruption is observed but there’s no evidence of a virus or intentional tampering, you can’t pin the cause to a known malicious or deliberate act. The safest and most accurate conclusion is that the cause is unknown at this time, because the specific factors have not been shown by the available evidence.

Other potential sources could still explain the issue, such as hardware failure (like failing storage sectors or memory errors), power interruptions, file system or software bugs, or improper shutdowns. To move toward a more definite conclusion, further analysis is needed—checking system logs, drive SMART data, and file hashes, comparing with backups, and running integrity or repair tools. If these checks don’t reveal a cause, the finding remains that the origin of the corruption is unknown.