Strangely named files appear on desktop

G

gtackett

Registered
I keep getting a lot of files with names like this appearing on my desktop:

2DF4E13B-58D9-4F98-A239-6AFF2F8CCF5B-311-00000024DF1FD99B
4C626D42-AEA3-440D-8E78-5D67D1BFD916-15412-0000057729783733
69AA3C3E-C1F2-4C85-8CD5-617D38EF0CBF-15412-0000057752AD2ED8
87FBD430-016F-420D-8A9A-4D90A3B9F1B3-15412-0000068655FC365E

You get the idea.

They are typically locked, but not always, usually have a creation date of Jan. 16, 2008, and are always 4.3 MB in size.

I think they may be associated with browser (Firefox) activity but am not completely certain.

Any idea where they're coming from and what to do about them?
 
How come you suspect Firefox? Did you download files that could've been saved to the Desktop unexpectedly (i.e. with these wrong filenames etc.)?
 
Fryke,

I initially suspected Firefox because I first noticed the files appearing while just browsing--not specifically downloading anything.

However, I came across this thread about similarly named folders (not ordinary files) showing up when using You Control: Desktops. I am also using this virtual desktop manager and will try turning it off when I get home today.

If that doesn't do it, I have another line of thinking to pursue:

A couple of times recently I've had a specific kind of file (not an application) that, when launched by double click or by the browser, apparently causes Finder to die and restart. When this happens there appear a new half dozen or so of these strange files. (Whether it's Finder, or Desktops, that's crashing remains to be determined.)

Perhaps there is a corrupt file association. To check this I'd try rebuilding the file associations. I don't recall just how to do that, but it might be that one of one of the tools I have like MacPilot, OnyX, or Xupport might be able to do it for me.​

Other ideas or suggestions are still welcome.
 
Is your download directory set to be your desktop? Those files have the name format of CLSIDs. They could be attempts at setting malware on your computer if they came from the Internet. The good news is that they probably do absolutely nothing to Mac OS.
 
I had a massive influx of files appearing on my desktop last night, like thousands, coming in between 9:47 pm and 10:12 pm. I was using iTunes at the time, but also had Firefox and Twirl open. That's why I didn't see them right away.

Computer got MASSIVELY hot, and crashed. I shut down the Air Port first, to get offline in case it was botnet. But even worse, the crash was so bad, I had to let the machine cool down unplugged, with the battery out. It just couldn't get power to start.

Was able to start this morning, with the battery out, just off power cord.

Thus able to inspect the bizarre files. Most are 4 KB. Some are 80 KB and some are 32 KB. They have gibberish names with .xul.part at the end of each.

Anybody know what .xul.part is?

As I look at the time stamps on them, there are more than 100 at any given minute (bigger than a finder window), like 10:11 pm , for instance.

Some sample file names: AMqBvVnD.xul.part HaqMWatF.xul.part

I'd copy more, but I'm keeping that machine isolated and off the network right now.

Any thoughts on this bizarre event would be much appreciated!

Chris
 
My desktop (PB17 tiger) disappeared completely, but the dock and my desktop picture were still visible. Murphy's Law - I had just finished many hours of work and had not backed up yet.

Rebuilding permissions, repairing from Apple CD, rebuilding with Drive Genius, removing finder prefs and reinstalling system update all failed to correct the issue. NAV found no virus or trojan.

Booting from my external, I was able to see that over a ten hour period, 16,736 files had been downloaded to my desktop folder. All files had the suffix of either "xul.part" or "html.part"

Theorizing this may have choked the finder, a new folder was created inside the desktop folder, all ".part" files were then moved to the empty folder. This took several minutes to complete. Once the tally of files was trimmed, the desktop once again appeared.

Firefox, Netscape (yes, I know - I just LIKE it okay?) and iTunes were running at the time of the invasive downloads. I cannot guarantee one of our cats did not walk over the keyboard and trigger some unknown command so the reason being remains unknown.

I am uncertain if there is a size limit on desktop content (mine had 33Gb), there certainly appears to be an item (file or folder) quantity limit.

Thank goodness for firewire boot drives! Get one if you haven't already (at least as large as your internal drive so you can also do full backups (my iTunes library represents years of work with sorting, tags, artwork and lyrics for app 90% of 29,000 tunes)
 
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geminixx said:
I am uncertain if there is a size limit on desktop content (mine had 33Gb), there certainly appears to be an item (file or folder) quantity limit.
Click to expand...

Mac OS X treats each desktop icon as a Finder window (more or less). It's not so much a size issue; rather a quantity issue. Many, many, many items on your Desktop can cause performance problems.

Simple fix: create a folder on your Desktop called "Old Desktop Shizzle" (or whatever), drag all your desktop items into that folder, and watch your performance increase.

Strange, yes... but it does have to do with the sheer quantity of items on your desktop, not the actual file size of those items.
 
Chris B said:
I had a massive influx of files appearing on my desktop last night, like thousands, coming in between 9:47 pm and 10:12 pm. I was using iTunes at the time, but also had Firefox and Twirl open. That's why I didn't see them right away.

Computer got MASSIVELY hot, and crashed. I shut down the Air Port first, to get offline in case it was botnet. But even worse, the crash was so bad, I had to let the machine cool down unplugged, with the battery out. It just couldn't get power to start.

Was able to start this morning, with the battery out, just off power cord.

Thus able to inspect the bizarre files. Most are 4 KB. Some are 80 KB and some are 32 KB. They have gibberish names with .xul.part at the end of each.

Anybody know what .xul.part is?

As I look at the time stamps on them, there are more than 100 at any given minute (bigger than a finder window), like 10:11 pm , for instance.

Some sample file names: AMqBvVnD.xul.part HaqMWatF.xul.part

I'd copy more, but I'm keeping that machine isolated and off the network right now.

Any thoughts on this bizarre event would be much appreciated!

Chris
Click to expand...
I just had a similar thing happen to me. I had Firefox and Photoshop open when things started working very slow. Figuring I had too many windows open I tried to check by pressing F9. It took ages to work and then the loading 'beach ball' would not go away at all. I could see a load of files on my desktop behind my open windows which should not have been there. I had to Force quit my open applications and relaunch the finder.
When It opened, eventually, nothing showed on my desktop at all! I found that if I click on the desktop where all my known files were, they would reappear. The same with these weird files though. Some were .XUL.part and others .html.part

Anyone have a solution to this puzzle?

*EDIT* What I thought was a large amount of these files, (91) turned out to be a massive 3274 files! Almost every one a .XUL.part file. What the hell? They all were sent over a 15 minute period of time.
 
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