Okay, so my neighbour's computer is fubar again. This time she's seeing what she describes as "little red & green dots on her files." What this means is they on really any document file stored on her system--Word stuff, ZIP packages, JPEG files, MPEG audio, really doesn't matter.

These little "dots" she describes are small overlay icons in the lower-right corner of the file's normal icon: a red dot with a small X-mark in it, a yellow dot with an up-arrow, and a green dot with a white tick mark.

I think it might be a malware or rootkit of some sort. The three computer techs she's talked to really have no idea what it is. She had Avira Free Personal but about a week ago was told to change it to an antivirus programme known as "AVG Free 8.0". (I had never heard of that until about a week ago, to be honest.....) Neither Spybot nor the anti-virus programmes appear to detect it. She also uses some on-line pay backup system known as "Mozy Home" which I know nothing about, excpt that she "pay[s] five dollars a month for it."

She's still using XP with Service Pack 2 on a Dell Dimension 8300.

So to cut to the chase: anyone have any idea what may be causing these little icons to appear? Anyone else heard of this happening?

I'll bet you AVG does it. Does it on web links too.

You can enter the AVG control panel, via the system icon, and turn various things on and off, or deal with it, knowing it's the AV stuff in play.

I wouldn't be too certain of that. It was doing this before we installed AVG, figure about 2-3 weeks now. She just put AVG in last Wednesday.......

But I should check the control panel out next time I am over there.

And backups too?

"Why are there colored dots on my files and folders?

AVG Online Backup puts colored dots on your file and folder icons in Windows Explorer to indicate their backup status.

A green dot on a file or folder means it is backed up and has not been modified since the last backup; its backup copy is up-to-date.

A yellow dot means that the file or folder is awaiting backup either because it is new or has been modified since the last backup.

If a folder's backup is up-to-date, but there are some files in the folder which are not selected for backup, AVG Online Backup will mark it with a 'green donut' -- a green dot with a hole in the middle.

If a file or folder has no dot, it means it will not be backed up. Simply right-click on any file or folder to see a description of its backup status in the AVG Online Backup menu."

From:
http://www.carbonite.com/avg/customersupport/BrowseCategory.aspx?forumid=42#2

Interesting....

Could be Jzip (doubt it, but maybe)

Could be this too:

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This is what I used to get rid of the little arrows that you still have a few of in some icons instead of the dots.
It may get rid of the dots too:

HOW TO GET RID OF SHORTCUT ARROWS ON DESKTOP ICONS (XP + Vista)

Open a RUN box by either pressing and holding the Windows button (just left of Space Bar) and pressing 'R' ...or click START / RUN

Type in "regedit" (without the quotes ") and press ENTER - this opens the windows registry (do not change any other entrys or you can damage your installation)

navigate to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile (thats a lowercase L not I in lnkfile so browse through to 'L' to find it) Delete the IsShortcut registry value in the right panel then close the registry editor and restart windows (or log off then back on)

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quote:

Those dots are exactly in the same place, same size, and same color as the ones I have and they are used by Carbonite, the online backup service, to indicate that file or folder is backed up. Yellow means it is in the que to be backed up and I think red means it had a problem backing up the file or folder.

I don't know if there are any other applications that use what looks like an identical marking system or not.

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Betcha it's the backup. If so, the markers are a good thing, as they indicate the status!!

Just checked through an AVG installation. It does not do this kind of thing that I can tell for files. Web links get some attention, but not like that.

Mozey Home status icons:

http://support.mozy.com/docs/en-user-home-win/guide/concepts/status_icons_c.html

Yep, I have these on my icons from Mozy, too.

Andrew

Yes, that appears to be it.

Thank you!