What are these files?
Asked by
JimmyG (
122
)
March 23rd, 2009
On my C drive, not in a folder, each is 103 MB:
s2cc s2cc.1 s2cc.2 s2dk s2dk.1 s2dk.2 s3sk s3sk.1 s3sk.2 s3sk.3 s3sk.4 s3sk.5 s4ng s4ng.1 s4ng.2 s5g4 s5g4.1 s5g4.2 s5g4.3 s5g4.4 s5g4.5 s5ho s5ho.1 s5ho.2 s5ho.3 s5ho.4 s5ho.5 s5s0 s5s0.1 s5s0.2 s454 s454.1 s454.2 s454.3 s454.4 s454.5
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6 Answers
My first thought is virus droppings, but I don’t know.
Might want to try opening one up with a file editor to see if you can read any of the content.
Another idea is to check the timestamps for when they were created, modified or used, and if that information is accurate, it might give a clue – you could also search the system for other files on the computer that were created at the same time.
Another idea is to look to see if any of them have OS metadata (if this is Windows, right-click, Properties, version info values), though I expect not.
Another approach is to move the files to a new subdirectory (or back them up to an external location), and then see if the computer behaves differently with them in a new location (i.e. you get to find out what happens if you delete them, without actually deleting them and having no way of getting them back if it turns out they were useful for something).
Bingo! They were all created July 12, 2008, the same date I installed LizardTech image compression and Xnview image viewer. With both, but more so Xnview, they created tons of files. I can’t remember the last time I’ve used either of them. Probably not proof positive, but I’m convinced.
I moved them to the trash earlier today with no, so far, adverse effects.
Thanks again.
Glad to help!
Also, for what it’s worth, what I know about at least some LizardTech image compression software, would lead me to not guess it was from that one.
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