OK I am at my wit's end. I have googled this and tried 100's of things and I don't know where to turn... hoping someone here may help
Windows XP pro SP 3, all updates to date
Dell vostro laptop
checked with nod32, spybot, adaware, certified clean.
No new programs installed.
I am an administrator
the other night I was doing some work, created a new folder on my desktop called of course "new folder" I put a zip file in there, extracted it, then after working with the files deleted the contents with a shift-delete. during the course of all this I made another "new folder" on the desktop also, and named it differently. I then shift-deleted everything I worked with and went to bed.
today upon startup the "new folder" was recreated on my desktop, empty, even of hidden and system files, but with a grayed read only setting (meaning something below in the directory was set to read only).
if I delete this folder and close the laptop when I reopen and log in it creates itself again.
If I rename the folder the newly named folder stays in place and another "new folder" is created.
If I delete the renamed folder only "new folder" is recreated
If I delete it and reboot logging is as either me or administrator it recreates itself (in c:\documents and settings\Dave\desktop directory)
I have deleted it, then checked the registry, I have also don a full error check on restart.
It does NOT create itself booting in safe mode, but as soon as I log in regular it comes back.
does anyone have a suggestion to removing this anomaly? ? ? ? ? PLEASE?