Unknown files appearing

[Guest]

Hi! I have been noticing files appearing where they weren't before and
without me putting them there. Possibly they all showed up at the same time
but I didn't notice them until I opened those files. desktop.ini was first
to show up, on my desktop, it says it is a data file and that if I delete it
one of my programs may no longer work. My picture files all have the
following in them hpothb07.dat , hpoth07.tif and Thumbs.db (also a system
file). I am unsure if I can delete them or if it will harm something and I
don't know where they came from. When I do a search on the file names I come
up with hpoth07.dat 107 times, hpoth07.tif 103 times, Thumbs.db 99 times and
desktop.ini 192 times. I assume that at least some of these files are
supposed to be there, but all of them? Can anyone help? Thanks.

 

[R. McCarty]

They are normally hidden by the system. You've likely changed the View
options of Explorer so that they are now visible. Windows XP is designed
to Hide or SuperHide certain types or classes of files. Desktop.Ini is a
configuration file that applies views to the contents of a specific folder.
Thumbs.db (Database) is a cached copy of Thumbnail views. Best to not
modify or remove any of them - but get used to their presence in Explorer.

 

[Guest]

Hi: as stated by R.McCarty, these are system files.
If you want to hide them, open Windows Explorer/Tools/Folder Options/View:
[1] For thumbnails: tick "Do not cache thumbnails". They will not appear in
future, but for the ones you already have, you must make a choice of deleting
them manually.

[2] For Desktop.ini, etc: tick "Do not show hidden files and folders" and
untick "Display the contents of the system folders".