HI folks! one of my folders suddenly has turned into an exe file. Totally bizarre! Anyone know what to do in this case? The thing is empty says 0 bytes. It was a folder with photos. Lots of memories. On an external sandisk thumb drive. Please help if you can. Thanks in advanced
MacBook Pro Retina
Yes, the greyed out ones are invisible files. You can use Command + Shift + Period to toggle this on and off.
Thank you for the heads up about that. And your thoughts about this problem not being a virus. So frustrating not knowing what to do.
Man thank you so much for that tip! Can you believe i didn't know that?? Doohhhh :-(
Havent tried that but I am not too sure what you mean. Boot up from the thumb drive?
No just boot from your regular drive while holding the Shift Key.
I see ok ill try it
IamTheKnowledgeSeeker wrote:
With respect, I disagree about viruses.
None of what you referenced were viruses.
You think its better to put those additional folders somewhere else? Could that be confusing the finder?
There are no viruses on macOS.
There are some other forms of malware, all blocked by the OS.
There is a lot of Adware, but I've never heard of that doing anything but hijacking your browser.
Nobody is in the business of creating malware that screws with your files. They are in it for money and wrecking your files is not going to make them any money.
And no, I wouldn't just reformat the drive. I'd buy a new one. And, I'd buy another hard drive to back up those pictures. You should not use a USB thumb drive for anything but temporary storage.
The old drive may be recoverable, but it should not be trusted. I would only use it for Sneaker Net file transfers.
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?
Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.
Folder suddenly turned into exe file
