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Odd, weird, strange file names on hard drive

For the last several months, I have had odd file names showing up on my hard drive. I click on the file to open it and "text edit" opens to a blank page. I delete these files but within a few days they are back again. Does anyone know where these are coming from and how to make them stop appearing?

Examples of the names are: %90, %90%E0%FF%BF7', %A0%E0%FF%BF7', and p%E0%FF%BF7', they all say "zero KB" under size, and "plain text" under kind.

I attempted to post a pic of my HD below but am not sure if it will work.

Thanks,

Dan


/Users/Dan/Desktop/Picture 1.jpg

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.5), 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on Dec 6, 2008 10:30 AM

Reply
30 replies

Dec 6, 2008 7:19 PM in response to dmn48312

dmn48312 wrote:
Bootcamp? Oh, no, running Windows on a mac is like putting ketchup on a steak, lol. Thanks for the tip anyway 🙂

Yeh, I agree, lol.

ONTOPIC: Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, and copy the blue text in. DON'T PRESS ENTER YET.

ls -aleO@


Now, type a space after the @ sign, and drag one of the files in from Finder into the Terminal. Press enter, and paste the results of the command up here.

Good luck!

Message was edited by: joshz

Dec 6, 2008 7:29 PM in response to joshz

I did that for the 5 odd files that are currently on my hard drive. Here are the results:



-aleO@ /\%90
ls: /%90: No such file or directory
d14-69-141-73:~

-aleO@ /\%90\%E0\%FF\%BF7\'
-rw-r--r-- 1 Dan admin - 0 Dec 2 08:13 /%90%E0%FF%BF7'
d14-69-141-73:~

-aleO@ /\%80\%E0\%FF\%BF7\'
-rw-r--r-- 1 Eileen admin - 0 Dec 3 20:59 /%80%E0%FF%BF7'
d14-69-141-73:~

-aleO@ /\%A0\%E0\%FF\%BF7\'
-rw-r--r-- 1 Dan admin - 0 Dec 1 21:32 /%A0%E0%FF%BF7'
d14-69-141-73:~

-aleO@ /p\%E0\%FF\%BF7\'
-rw-r--r-- 1 Eileen admin - 0 Dec 2 16:59 /p%E0%FF%BF7'
d14-69-141-73:~

Dec 6, 2008 8:02 PM in response to joshz

O, wow. That's bizarre. I have never seen anything like that either... I'm used to seeing something along the lines of
*-rw-r--r--@ 1 Me staff - 1258429 Dec 2 22:33 /Users/Me/Desktop/hubbard_talk.pdf*
* com.apple.FinderInfo 32*

Any idea what that could be? Especially the last line, d14-69-141-73:~ ?

Dec 6, 2008 8:06 PM in response to dmn48312

Go into Disk Utility, and do both a Verify Disk and Repair Permissions. The last line of the output of that command you posted is beyond anything I have seen. Run that command again.

Odd, weird, strange file names on hard drive

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