What is this file in my "Macintosh HD" folder? (screenshot attached)

[lars666]

Hi everybody,

since today, I have a strange file without any name in my main "Macintosh HD" folder. I attach two screenshots - one "normal" one and one with the file marked. When I right-click on this one, it says that it is a document with the size of 86 KB. I can open it with Text Edit and get a lot of unreadable characters ...

Can I (safely) delete this file? Or did there go something wrong and a folder is hidden behind that? (Is there a standard folder missing at the moment? Can't remember exactly if it were these five before or if there was another sixth one ...)

Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!!!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Can you post a screenshot of the GET INFO window with General, More Info, Name & Extension and Sharing & Permissions collapsed?

 

[lars666]

Hi simsaladimbamba,

thanks for your answer - screenshot attached! (in German, sorry ...)

EDIT: Forgot to open "More Info" - it only says: Last opened: Today, 00:09 (when I did so with TextEdit). No other info there.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Hi simsaladimbamba,

thanks for your answer - screenshot attached! (in German, sorry ...)

No Problemo wie Alf immer sagte.

Anyway, I don't see anything there, and my knowledge of UNIX and Mac OS X is not that deep.
If you have a good backup you can either boot from (CarbonCopyCloner for example) or restore from (Time Machine), I would just simply delete the file. Or if you can live with it, just keep it, as it hardly eats any HDD capacity.

 

[maflynn]

Its probably just a blank file, open it up within text edit and see if there's anything in it

 

[lars666]

Thanks again for your answer. I really don't know how this little file suddenly came there and I am a bit confused about this circle when marked (or does this always appear when files with no name at all are marked?), but I'll delete it. I have a backup for the worst case. Also checked via Time Machine that I didn't had six, but five folders before so that this is no "mutated" folder or something like this.

If anybody here still says: WARNING - DON'T DELETE this, just let me know. Otherwise, this file soon will be history ... Thanks again for the help.

EDIT: Deleted the file, rebooted, everything works fine.

 

[lars666]

Its probably just a blank file, open it up within text edit and see if there's anything in it

It isn't blank, it has a lot of (unreadable) characters in it, like when opening a JPEG with TextEdit or something like this. Anyway, I hope the file is needless nevertheless.