Tilde mystery

[Cetti]

An icon keeps appearing on my desktop - and I don't have a clue where it's come from. The microsoft flag on a white background with a tilde underneath. Any ideas? Thank you.

[anthomson]

Right-Click over the icon to get its properties and see where it is pointing (location and target). This may give a you clue. Go to the location and then try right-clicking over the actual target file to list its properties. This should give you a brief description of the file and who developed it.

[Cetti]

Thanks for answering - I've gone in with windows explorer, and there's loads of file names Perform.log Scandisk.log to name just a couple that appear with the flag/white background. it looks as though they've been defaced. Not a virus I do know that for sure.

The one with the tilde says -size 194kb - MS-DOS name ~ (created 26 May 2003. I can't make head or tail of it, can you? I'd be ever so grateful if you would help some more.

[anthomson]

Cetti - funny a couple of hours after posting my answer to your question yesterday I found the mysterious icon on my desktop as well. Also found the file in my c: drive. Will investigate further...

[anthomson]

Curious - looking in the file and it contains all the names from my outlook express address book.

[Cetti]

Hi anthomsom - It seems like a common problem. I found this after a search -

"I think that is a 'tilde' file that has been created by a recent update from Microsoft Internet Explorer pertaining to your address book. It is caused by a bug in the update, which Microsoft is aware of, BUT it has a low priority according to the buzz on the net to fix it. If I read everything right, it is a copy of your address book, which you can safely delete".

So it seems that the defacing of loads of icons in my C Drive is something quite different. Oh dear!!

[anthomson]

Hi Cetti, just found the same info : http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&thread
id=16820 A tilde is not the eaiset thing to search for on google. As regards the microsoft icon on other files - i would guess this is just the default icon windows uses if the file doesn't have its own icon - like an address book backup file.