Tilde (~) file in Macintosh HD directory

[entropicpolarbe]

Hey all,

I have searched for this as much as possible but am not finding any conclusive answer and am not a techy enough to try and figure it out myself....

My laptop restarted itself last night for no reason and when i restarted it, all the items on the desktop were no longer there and in the Macintosh HD folder there was a ~ file with what seemed like a system dump (approx 500kb in size)

Now Firefox and iTunes no longer work. iTunes says it can not find the library file.

Here are some images of what it looks like:
http://www.oddsockcreations.com/help/screenshot1.tiff
http://www.oddsockcreations.com/help/screenshot3.tiff
http://www.oddsockcreations.com/help/tildefile.tiff
and here is the log from around that time too...

http://www.oddsockcreations.com/help/systemlog.rtf

This happened 6 months ago when i tried to install CS 3 suite and i had to reinstalled OSX and start all from scratch....

If i delete the file and restart the laptop, the file returns, and then it begins to no longer recognize external hard drives and the only way to access them is via Terminal.

any advice.... i am backing up what i can for the moment but would prefer to know what has happened and how to fix it....

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Keith

Mac Book Pro Mac OS X (10.5.6)

 

[robbieduncan]

~ has a special meaning in Unix (and OSX is a Unix). It means the users home directory. A file with this name may well be confusing a whole load of applications. Can you rename it?

 

[entropicpolarbe]

Tilde (~) file in Macintosh HD directory

Tried to either delete it or rename it before and the file just re-appears...


have done a comprehensive virus scan many times but nothing is found...

 

[sammich]

Wow, that's really messed up.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8261580 <- you saw this already?

Have you tried just renaming it but not deleting it?

 

[entropicpolarbe]

Tilde (~) file in Macintosh HD directory

ya... saw that post....

and its the same as me..... its looking i will have to do a full wipe of the HD and install OS X again...

is there any way i can find out how this file was created, what processes run to do so... it seems automated... as soon as i delete it, it re-appears..... the system log gives no info...

is there any other log i can check for this??? or hints on how to trouble shoot...

regards

keith

 

[edblor]

ya... saw that post....

and its the same as me..... its looking i will have to do a full wipe of the HD and install OS X again...

is there any way i can find out how this file was created, what processes run to do so... it seems automated... as soon as i delete it, it re-appears..... the system log gives no info...

is there any other log i can check for this??? or hints on how to trouble shoot...

regards

keith

Something is obviously creating it. I'd create another account and log in as it. See if the file gets created again in the other users' (your current user) account.

You should be able to get info regarding when and who created it though.