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Mele20
Premium Member
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI

Mele20

Premium Member

What's this odd file in my Downloads folder?

I used System Restore to two days ago a couple of hours ago. That meant I had to reinstall the latest Flash Player for IE 10. When I went to my Downloaded programs folder to install it, I noticed this strange file - odd name and zero bytes - from Sept 18. That's too long ago to recall if I was downloading a program or something at that time. What could it be?

Drunkula
Premium Member
join:2000-06-12
Denton, TX

Drunkula

Premium Member

Uncertain. It could be a file that was opened and for some reason never closed or was closed improperly (a browser or computer crash perhaps). As such it's probably a minor file system corruption. Better run a chkdsk c: /f on it

sweller
join:2009-04-25
Tucson, AZ

sweller to Mele20

Member

to Mele20
Why is it on D? Is that a large partitioned drive?
Mele20
Premium Member
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI

Mele20

Premium Member

I have two hard drives: one a 256GB SSD on which the OS is installed and also a 2TB data drive.

It occurred to me that some 0 byte files are extremely difficult to delete so I was curious about this one. I was able to easily send it to the recycle bin.

Since it was in the Downloaded Programs folder on the D drive that says that I must have downloaded it as that is where all downloads go. I looked at Pale Moon downloads list and there was nothing downloaded on the date on that file.

Chubbzie
join:2014-02-11
Greenville, NC
Hitron CDA3
(Software) OpenBSD + pf

Chubbzie to Mele20

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to Mele20
Kinda looks like a temp file created by an installer. As Drunkula See Profile suggested have you tried running any utils against the drive to check for problems?
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

1 edit

1 recommendation

dave to Mele20

Premium Member

to Mele20
I'd say it was a typing error. Of the sort where you get your command qualifiers in the wrong place in the command (-s being a likely sort of string to be a command qualifier) so that it gets interpreted as a filename rather than a command qualifier. Either that or an expectation of Unix-style syntax ('-s') on a command that only supports DOS-style syntax ('/s')

Chubbzie
join:2014-02-11
Greenville, NC
Hitron CDA3
(Software) OpenBSD + pf

Chubbzie

Member

said by dave:

Of the sort where you get your command qualifiers in the wrong place in the command

Good point, although its been quite a while, I have seen this happen before in scenarios such as what you mentioned.

Bill_MI
Bill In Michigan
MVM
join:2001-01-03
Royal Oak, MI
TP-Link Archer C7
Linksys WRT54GS
Linksys WRT54G v4

Bill_MI to Mele20

MVM

to Mele20
said by Mele20:

...I looked at Pale Moon downloads list and there was nothing downloaded on the date on that file.

Something to add I've used in the past. Search your drive(s) for all files "*" or whatever works these days, narrowing down to that day, and see what else has near that timestamp. Created time can also be more effective than modified time.