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Strange Files All Over the Place!!!

Y

youssefm

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2008
386
0
So today I was doing a backup on time machine and I was going through my hard drive to see if everything was backed up properly, and as I was going through the users folder under my screen name, I found all these messy files all over the place. I do use parallels so I'm sure it's something related to that, but should I get rid of these files, or what can I do to keep it less cluttered? There are SO many files there, it's kind of annoying. Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks.
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Depends on the path they were in. If they were under an application in Parallels, then probably you should keep them. If they were under TEMP or something like that, then you can probably delete them.

Helps to know what they are used for before making the decision.
 
Well they are under Macintosh HD > Users > "my name for user" > Then all these files are there, and so are the documents, applications, etc folders.
How can I tell you more info about them?
 
youssefm said:
Well they are under Macintosh HD > Users > "my name for user" > Then all these files are there, and so are the documents, applications, etc folders.
How can I tell you more info about them?
Click to expand...

All I know is that they are windows files.
 
Is this path shared in your Parellels with the Windows instance? i'm wondering if you might be using the user folder for files under parallels or if you might have installed something there.
 
iShater said:
Is this path shared in your Parellels with the Windows instance? i'm wondering if you might be using the user folder for files under parallels or if you might have installed something there.
Click to expand...

How can I figure this out? I'm pretty sure I haven't installed anything there. These files also seem to be popping up in random places as well. I'll find like 3 .exe files in random folders sometimes.
 
youssefm said:
How can I figure this out? I'm pretty sure I haven't installed anything there. These files also seem to be popping up in random places as well. I'll find like 3 .exe files in random folders sometimes.
Click to expand...

This looks a whole lot like the typical behavior of Windows spyware (dropping randomly-named executables in weird spots). I'd recommend you disinfect your Parallels VM.

You may also want to switch off "Shared Profile", if you're not using it.

http://kb.parallels.com/6912
 
I don't have Parallels up and running the the moment, but I believe there is a Shared Folders option in on of the menus.

Google some of the names of the files, because others might be seeing these in a normal Windows system as well.
 
Okay I will definitely try that! I'm not sure how it could be spyware because my bootcamp partition isn't connected to the internet. Maybe from other files though, but thanks for all the help :)
 
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