Strange entries in top level of my hard drive

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mattknows

macrumors newbie

Original poster

• May 29, 2008

• #1

I've not seen this before, ever. Entries are slowlllly appearing that look like this:

%80
%94{.

or longer, always staring with the same 3 characters I think, OR there is NO file name at all. They are all exactly 324K in size, but if I open any of them in Textedit or TextMate, all I can see is

Ω and an A with an umlaut.

Oh and no....they don't start with the same letters for the file name each time... I can also delete them...but they slowly appear each day. Doesn't seem to be a sign of hard drive failure, the computer otherwise acts fine...


Any ideas? 😕

 

M

mattknows

macrumors newbie

Original poster

• Jun 3, 2008

• #2

I thought I might bump this as this is still happening. What would make these files randomly show up throughout the day, 3-5 a day or so. No idea what is causing them....anyone? Today one the files was named `&FF?


NEVER seen this before.... 😱 😕

 

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leandeanus

macrumors newbie

• Jun 17, 2008

• #3

Hello mattknows

Please let me know if you figure this out. I have a similar issue. My HDD is named with a "greater-than-equal sign followed by a space and then about 5 "omega" symbols. This Macbook Pro is brand new and has less than 72 logged hours on it. Please feel free to email me (anyone who can explain this) at "drooney2006@gmail.com" TIA! -dean

 

M

mattknows

macrumors newbie

Original poster

• Jun 17, 2008

• #4

leandeanus said:

Please let me know if you figure this out. I have a similar issue. My HDD is named with a "greater-than-equal sign followed by a space and then about 5 "omega" symbols. This Macbook Pro is brand new and has less than 72 logged hours on it. Please feel free to email me (anyone who can explain this) at "drooney2006@gmail.com" TIA! -dean

Click to expand...

Your HARDRIVE is NAMED that? Sounds like you clicked on the hard drive icon and entered random text without realizing it. My problem is these are ENTRIES in the root of the volume. Here is a screenshot:

WHACKO. 😱

 

cptpower

macrumors regular

• Jun 17, 2008

• #5

try opening one of those files in vi in a terminal window.

Any way you can post one of the files as an attachment to this thread?

You might also want to try using the command "lsof" in terminal. That will give you an *extensive* list of all open files. If you grep that with the file names that were recently created, then maybe you can see what process is creating them.