My folders keep splitting!

A few months ago, my Documents folder emptied itself without warning. When I
looked through my User folder, I saw that there were suddenly two Documents
folders, and one of them was now empty. A few weeks later, it happened again.
I tried changing the names of them to make them merge with each other (with
UAC turned off), but apparently I didn't have permission to do that.
Yesterday, the same thing happened to my Music folder. The start menu
shortcut now points to an empty folder with a copy of the shortcut to the
"sample music" folder. Which in turn is weird, because I'm running Home
premium Swedish edition and the folders name should be "exempelmusik". Does
anyone know what is happening to my system?

Weird behavior like that would cause me to start looking for viruses and
malware on any operating system.

I'd try first getting rid of any anti virus software you may have
installed, and getting AVG Free from Grissoft and doing a full virus
scan.

After you do this I'd consider getting Spybot Search & Destroy (second
or third link in a google search--there's a malware app that comes up at
the top and is made to look similar to Spybot S&D, god bless 'em) and
doing a full system scan with this. Also use Spybot S&D to "immunize"
your system--it works very well, or at least it did on XP, haven't done
so on this Vista system yet. But it should work.

After that, run a full anti virus scan again. If you come across any
viruses it can't remove, research the virus and find out how to remove
it manually--there's always a way.

Then see if this problem goes away. If not, then you can start feeling
more certain it's Viscous itself and not some third party problem.


--
wornways
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

Thank you for your answer. I'm running F-secure right now, alongside with
ad-aware and ad-watch. This combination works very well, and I don't feel
like swapping to AVG since my past experiences with it has not been very
good. I'm doing weekly scans, and I haven't found anything. I will try
downloading Spybot S&D and scanning with that, maybe I'll get different
results.

Lime wrote:

> Thank you for your answer. I'm running F-secure right now, alongside with
> ad-aware and ad-watch. This combination works very well, and I don't feel
> like swapping to AVG since my past experiences with it has not been very
> good. I'm doing weekly scans, and I haven't found anything. I will try
> downloading Spybot S&D and scanning with that, maybe I'll get different
> results.

Since you feel pretty confident that your computer is virus/malware-free
(and I completely agree with you as to the worth of AVG although I like
NOD32 best), then test the hard drive and the memory. Your symptoms could
be caused by failing hardware since it sounds as though the file system is
becoming corrupted.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...ardware_Tshoot

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!