Two mysterious directories, sometimes invisible

[Anthony Buckland]

YMMV, but on my system (WinXP Media Edition with SP3),
two directories hang off C:\Documents and Settings, but are
invisible by all normal means that I can discover in Windows,
with one exception: if I go to Command Prompt and do a
"dir /ad" in Documents and Settings, they are visible.
There is one application that seems able to see them; in
Zone Alarm (lately the subject of considerable debate in
this group) -- in the Anti-virus/Anti-spyware window, go to
Advanced Options, then to Scan Targets, and they are
oddly enough visible.

Yes, I have hidden files and system folders set to be visible.

The directories are "LocalService" and "NetworkService",
one word in each case. (The other directories in Documents
and Settings, visible by every means I've tried, are All Users,
[me], Default User and Administrator.)

What are these two directories, and why are they so shy?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

YMMV, but on my system (WinXP Media Edition with SP3),
two directories hang off C:\Documents and Settings, but are
invisible by all normal means that I can discover in Windows,
with one exception: if I go to Command Prompt and do a
"dir /ad" in Documents and Settings, they are visible.
There is one application that seems able to see them; in
Zone Alarm (lately the subject of considerable debate in
this group) -- in the Anti-virus/Anti-spyware window, go to
Advanced Options, then to Scan Targets, and they are
oddly enough visible.

Yes, I have hidden files and system folders set to be visible.

The directories are "LocalService" and "NetworkService",
one word in each case. (The other directories in Documents
and Settings, visible by every means I've tried, are All Users,
[me], Default User and Administrator.)

What are these two directories, and why are they so shy?

Thanks for any help.

These are profile folders required by certain system services.
They are normally hidden in order to discourage eager users
from deleting them.

 

[Anthony Buckland]

YMMV, but on my system (WinXP Media Edition with SP3),
two directories hang off C:\Documents and Settings, but are
invisible by all normal means that I can discover in Windows,
with one exception: if I go to Command Prompt and do a
"dir /ad" in Documents and Settings, they are visible.
There is one application that seems able to see them; in
Zone Alarm (lately the subject of considerable debate in
this group) -- in the Anti-virus/Anti-spyware window, go to
Advanced Options, then to Scan Targets, and they are
oddly enough visible.

Yes, I have hidden files and system folders set to be visible.

The directories are "LocalService" and "NetworkService",
one word in each case. (The other directories in Documents
and Settings, visible by every means I've tried, are All Users,
[me], Default User and Administrator.)

What are these two directories, and why are they so shy?

Thanks for any help.

These are profile folders required by certain system services.
They are normally hidden in order to discourage eager users
from deleting them.

....
Thanks. Why did I ask? Because Zone Alarm, which I
have been accused of selling, has a problem, of taking
an ungodly amount of time to do a virus scan, particularly
of compressed files such as .CAB and .ZIP files. On my
machine anyway, LocalService contains 1588 .ZIP files.
ZA, by default, takes every compressed file apart and
examines its components. Great, except the components
would be examined anyway on access. The virus scan can
be speeded up by excluding all compressed files from the
scan.

To find the folders in question, by the way, involves turning
off "Hide protected operating system files". All hail

"Windows XP: Inside Out" (Bott, Siechert, Stinson)

my faithful companion since upgrading to XP.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

YMMV, but on my system (WinXP Media Edition with SP3),
two directories hang off C:\Documents and Settings, but are
invisible by all normal means that I can discover in Windows,
with one exception: if I go to Command Prompt and do a
"dir /ad" in Documents and Settings, they are visible.
There is one application that seems able to see them; in
Zone Alarm (lately the subject of considerable debate in
this group) -- in the Anti-virus/Anti-spyware window, go to
Advanced Options, then to Scan Targets, and they are
oddly enough visible.

Yes, I have hidden files and system folders set to be visible.

The directories are "LocalService" and "NetworkService",
one word in each case. (The other directories in Documents
and Settings, visible by every means I've tried, are All Users,
[me], Default User and Administrator.)

What are these two directories, and why are they so shy?

Thanks for any help.

These are profile folders required by certain system services.
They are normally hidden in order to discourage eager users
from deleting them.

...
Thanks. Why did I ask? Because Zone Alarm, which I
have been accused of selling, has a problem, of taking
an ungodly amount of time to do a virus scan, particularly
of compressed files such as .CAB and .ZIP files. On my
machine anyway, LocalService contains 1588 .ZIP files.
ZA, by default, takes every compressed file apart and
examines its components. Great, except the components
would be examined anyway on access. The virus scan can
be speeded up by excluding all compressed files from the
scan.

To find the folders in question, by the way, involves turning
off "Hide protected operating system files". All hail

"Windows XP: Inside Out" (Bott, Siechert, Stinson)

my faithful companion since upgrading to XP.

Neither of these profile folders should contain much data, in particular
not personal data such as .zip files. What are these .zip files?

 

[Anthony Buckland]

....
..."LocalService" and "NetworkService";
What are these two directories, and why are they so shy?

Thanks for any help.


These are profile folders required by certain system services.
They are normally hidden in order to discourage eager users
from deleting them.

...
...[My] virus scan can
be speeded up by excluding all compressed files from the
scan.

To find the folders in question, by the way, involves turning
off "Hide protected operating system files". All hail

"Windows XP: Inside Out" (Bott, Siechert, Stinson)

my faithful companion since upgrading to XP.

Neither of these profile folders should contain much data, in particular
not personal data such as .zip files. What are these .zip files?

....

Excellent question.

In localservice\local settings\temporary internet files\content IE5
are four directories, each with an 8-character alphameric name
with no discernible meaning. Taken together, the four names
_could_ be a license number or installation key for something
(not the current Zone Alarm), so I won't quote them. Each of the
four directories contains 395 to 400 .zip files with names of the
two forms (drum roll):

av.signatures.patch-nnnn[1]
or
vet.signatures.patch-nnnnn[1]

where "nnnn" or "nnnnn" is a 4 or 5-digit number, ascending
by modified date, with dates from April 2006 to June 2008.
I strongly suspect that they are Zone Alarm virus and
possibly spyware database updates, and will follow that up
on Zone Alarm's forum.

Why in heck's name they would squirrel these files away in
this peculiar way is beyond me. Failing to delete them,
though, is a comprehensible human error. Recently, I did a
superclean-supercomprehensive-wipeoutalltraces
deinstall of Zone Alarm using the gurus' advice on the
ZA forum, and clearly it didn't catch these files (the
deinstall was needed to jump from a really old release
of ZA to the modern day).

Thanks for your help, and for your patience in reading
the above.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

...
..."LocalService" and "NetworkService";
What are these two directories, and why are they so shy?

Thanks for any help.


These are profile folders required by certain system services.
They are normally hidden in order to discourage eager users
from deleting them.


...
...[My] virus scan can
be speeded up by excluding all compressed files from the
scan.

To find the folders in question, by the way, involves turning
off "Hide protected operating system files". All hail

"Windows XP: Inside Out" (Bott, Siechert, Stinson)

my faithful companion since upgrading to XP.

Neither of these profile folders should contain much data, in particular
not personal data such as .zip files. What are these .zip files?

...

Excellent question.

In localservice\local settings\temporary internet files\content IE5
are four directories, each with an 8-character alphameric name
with no discernible meaning. Taken together, the four names
_could_ be a license number or installation key for something
(not the current Zone Alarm), so I won't quote them. Each of the
four directories contains 395 to 400 .zip files with names of the
two forms (drum roll):

av.signatures.patch-nnnn[1]
or
vet.signatures.patch-nnnnn[1]

where "nnnn" or "nnnnn" is a 4 or 5-digit number, ascending
by modified date, with dates from April 2006 to June 2008.
I strongly suspect that they are Zone Alarm virus and
possibly spyware database updates, and will follow that up
on Zone Alarm's forum.

Why in heck's name they would squirrel these files away in
this peculiar way is beyond me. Failing to delete them,
though, is a comprehensible human error. Recently, I did a
superclean-supercomprehensive-wipeoutalltraces
deinstall of Zone Alarm using the gurus' advice on the
ZA forum, and clearly it didn't catch these files (the
deinstall was needed to jump from a really old release
of ZA to the modern day).

Thanks for your help, and for your patience in reading
the above.

VET is an anti-virus program. "AV" probably relates to some
other anti-virus program.