Desktop.ini(s) are no longer hidden.

[Guest]

I'm aware that almost every folder in Windows XP has a desktop.ini - but
until now it's never mattered because they're natively hidden by the OS.
Well, recently Avast (an antivirus program) detected the love.vbs virus in an
email; I'd never opened the email, Avast just catches the emails as they come
in, and this was junk anyway. Still, being as anal as I am - to be 100 sure,
I got the Symantec Fix Tool for the worm, to sniff out and check for sure if
anything got out. Alas, no infection in site however after the tool ran EVERY
desktop.ini in my PC was visible.....along with "ntdetect.com" and "boot.ini"
on every hard drive.

I contected symantec and they said they've never heard of this behavior.

I'm basically at a loss now. I can't hide any desktop.ini files because all
of the 'hidden' boxes are greyed out. I can MAKE a desktop.ini and hide
it.....so I got to thinking, "why don't I delete a few of them, the harmless
ones" because I know they come back automatically.
Sure they did....unhidden.....without the ability to be hidden. So - not
sure what else to do. I'm hoping someone else has seen/encountered this.

I've done a thorough scan with avast and the gdi tool since, as well as
Windows Defender and Spybot. Nothing...no viruses, no worms, no spyware.

Help?

 

[Mike Brearley]

Have you tried hiding the desktop.ini from the command prompt?

You may need to run two lines, the first setting it so it's not hidden,
system or read-only, the second setting it as system and hidden.

From the root of the drive, execute these two commands from the command
prompt:
attrib /s -s -h -r desktop.ini
attrib /s +s +h desktop.ini

I hope that works for you.

 

[Guest]

Attrib is acting weird. I run the commands you tell me but it keeps saying
"the system cannot find the path specified".....it says the same thing when I
just type attrib, but it does list all the files with system/read only,
hidden properties and such. So, I'm not sure what my next move should be.

 

[Mike Brearley]

Try this from the root of the c: drive.

C:\Windows\system32\attrib.exe /s -s -h -r desktop.ini
C:\Windows\system32\attrib.exe /s +s +h desktop.ini

Although... if you're unable to run attrib without typing in the full path
to it, it would appear as though you are having more issues than just
visible desktop.ini files.

 

[Guest]

Well as I said, attrib runs....as theres no way to see the attributes of all
the system files, etc. listed unless it did. It's just giving a weird
message. In any case...it didn't work. Did what you suggested and it's still
showing.