Strange desktop icon revisits me

[Ronin]

Every once in awhile, I'll see an icon on my desktop that consists of only this symbol ~. What does this mean?

I ran a total anti-virus scan, scanned for spyware, and nothing out of the ordinary appears.

[emr]

Some sort of temporary file? Normally the "~" symbol with a file name suffixed will appear when you open a Word document that is stored on your desktop for example .

This depends on whether you have the options to "Show Hidden Files and Folders" checked and the "Hide Protected Operating System Files" unchecked in Explorer | Tools | Folder Options | View tab.

Check that out first as a starting point.

emr

[craigmodius]

and that ''~'' symbol is called a ''tilde''

just a little bit of trivia for ya

[geoscomp]

Hmmm..have a couple of machines in town with that problem as well..when you open it up in notepad, do you get a bunch of formatting and a list of email addresses?

[NooNoo]

sounds like something a virus email engine would use then... virus all gone, but leaves the tell tail?

[geoscomp]

oddly enough, when I open this in wordperfect..(won't open in word) and remove all the formatting, it seems to be something from panda software..but panda is no longer installed on the machines that have it. I'm thinking the same as you NooNoo..

[Ronin]

I've updated my anti-virus software and ran Adaware for spyware. Nothing was found. I manually checked for any new installations or anything unusual, and I found nothing.

[techs]

I just saw one on a Win2000 machine. Whenever I see them I stick'em in the recycle bin. If no problems for a couple of days I delete them. I always thought they were some temp file that didn't get deleted.

[CeeBee]

I remember some weird desktop files appearing on systems with Kazaa installed. Don't remember if it was the '~' or something else though. Check the file attributes to see when they are created, this might give a clue.

[pops139]

This is so weird as I have just encountered this while working on a way to export an address book from Corel WP8 to CorelCentral 10. I have an OEM version of Corel Office 2002 and it seems that it is limited in that the "Import/Export" function in the AddressBook is grayed out and unavailable. As a result of screwing around making CSV, TXT, ABX, etc. I wound up with several of those "~" symbols on file that were copies of the above mentioned files. Just thought I'd let you know that this happened as an alternative to the virus theory.

[geoscomp]

Thats another thing that i am looking at..I sent the suspect file to both Panda and Symantec..but have since noticed that the WP 2000 oem installation appears to be screwed on these machines..will try to reinstall that and see if that is the problem

[Stu1701]

Hi all.
This is a backup address book created by OE whenever changes are made, rename the file to .wab and u will be able to open it and it will be the address book. if the file is deleted it will come back when changes are made. to prevent this from happening u have to rename the wab32.dll and replace it with an older version.

[Ronin]

*sniff-sniff-sniff..* I think you're on to something, because another just appeared after I added a new contact into the address book in Outlook Express.