Desktop icon keeps appearing in WinXP....what is it?

Factual Questions
1

OK, so I’m running WinXP with a clean install on my new machine.

I run Norton Anti-Virus, ZoneAlarm and periodically run both Spybot and Ad-aware.

Yet every couple of days this “program” icon shows up on my desktop with the name of “~” (tilde). Under properties it says:

Type of file: File
Description: ~

The creation date was two days ago. I’ve deleted this thing many times with no apparent ill effects, but a couple of days later it shows up again.

Is this anything to worry about? Is this a known WinXP issue, or is there something running in the background that Spybot and Ad-aware are both missing?

Thanks!

2

What is the Tilde (~) file that appears on Desktop?

That link gives the background, but not much of a fix. Something I’ve heard works is to right click your desktop Outlook Express shortcut, choose Properties, and change the “Start In” directory from blank to somewhere you don’t care if the ~ file gets created.

3

SmackFu thanks - that is exactly what I’ve been seeing. I don’t have an Outlook Express desktop shortcut, but I do have an IE one. I always check e-mail from inside IE, which came from a shortcut, so…I get the file.