I use WinMe. I have been installing & configuring my software to a point where I feel taking a Ghost image of each partition would be appropriate. I use Norton Utilities 2002 (especially Speed Disk). Finally preparing to use Ghost, I ran Speed Disk on D:, E:, F: & G:. I then turned to my C: partition and Speed Disk stopped part way through saying there was a problem that could be fixed by Disk Doctor. I ran Disk Doctor and it reported thousands of lost clusters. I followed the instructions to save these to files - but when I selected my F: drive as the place to save the lost clusters, Disk Doctor said the size of drive "Y" was 0 bytes. A similar thing happened when I selected my G: drive (said "Z" was 0 bytes). Eventually it accepted my E: partition as a suitable place. What the heck was that all about? (A couple of times I have had Speed Disk lock-up after completing a scan of C: ) Now I have managed to complete the de-frag of C: (which looked a mess, even though it's no more than a couple of weeks since I last used Speed Disk). I have tried running software to check that things are OK, so far without any problems. Norton WinDoctor hasn't found any problems. But. Today's little incident has left me with: - over 2500 _dd files in the root of C: - 5 folders called DIR0002,3 & 5 (created today), dunno where 4 has gone. These folders vary in size - one is 520Mb!. ome of them contain other folders called _ISTMP3.DIR, for example, and within those are other _ISTMP folders, each of which contains all sorts of stuff (from exe files like Acrobat Reader setup, dcom95 and Wintdist, to what are obviously gifs and other files downloaded from the Net etc.). One of the DIR000 folders has a folder in it called Content.IE5. There are no other folders on my drive with that name, so I'm worried that things have gone horribly wrong. Internet Explorer appears to be working fine though. What should I do (apart from taking up fishing, or something else less stressful)? It is not long ago that I started from scratch having wiped my whole drive. I was just at the point of Ghosting my drive when this happened, so I'm half expecting the worst. It would be nice though if someone would come back and say "delete all those folders/files and don't worry" - and mean it. On a different but related topic - in the root of my G: partition, I have a dozen or so files beginning with s3vv ...... e.g. s3vvls0p.4 and s3vvau8v.3. Can anyone tell me what these files are (and if it's safe to remove them)? Thanks for any advice you can give me.

As for my opinion of Norton, you don't want to hear it. You should have a file in your Temporary Internet Files folder called Content IE5 or IE6. In that file will also be the reknowned Index file which tracks everything you do online, and many solutions are offered in here to eliminate it (well at least erase it). the s3vv files, I can find nothing referring specifically to them, however I suspect they may be spyware. I would run AdAware to see if it picks them up. It can be downloaded FREE at www.lavasoft.com I don't know what you use that drive for?

The DIR000* files are created when scandisk finds a serious error on your computer's hard drive and you choose to save the error files. They're junk, you can throw them away. But if scandisk keeps making them, you may want to download the hard drive utilities from your hard drive manufacturer and make sure your hard drive is ok. You should not have that many MB of junk files when scandisk is finished. As for the s3*.* files... What kind of video card do you have? If you have an S3 video card, I would keep them.

Thanks for the replies folks. Brant: "As for my opinion of Norton, you don't want to hear it." I know hey've had some stick for NAV but I thought NU was quite respected. I may well be wrong, as I'm no expert. In particular though, I really thought that Speed Disk and Disk Doctor were accepted as being faster and better than the native Windows equivalents. Please, by all means, post a link to something damning, as I'm always keen to learn. "You should have a file in your Temporary Internet Files folder called Content IE5 or IE6. In that file will also be the reknowned Index file which tracks everything you do online, and many solutions are offered in here to eliminate it (well at least erase it)." I haven't (any more~) - the only such folder is the one in the DIR00n folder. It's called Content.IE5, although I updated to IE6 a while ago. IE6 still seems to function OK (so far) and there's a whole boat-load of files in my Temporary Internet Files folder created this evening (i.e. after 'the event'). "Living on borrowed time" springs to mind. Unfortunately no Index file is there. Newgrl: "you may want to download the hard drive utilities from your hard drive manufacturer and make sure your hard drive is ok. You should not have that many MB of junk files when scandisk is finished." I have run a thorough scan using Scandisk and it is now satisfied than nothing is wrong (it found errors but "fixed" them. Not sure what more is required. "As for the s3*.* files... What kind of video card do you have? If you have an S3 video card, I would keep them." I've got a Ge-force 2 GTS card (Creative) with recent Nvidia drivers. Thanks again - got a horrible feeling a complete format/Windows reinstall is needed here, even if everything seems to be running OK. Bugger. I had been planning to Ghost my PC just as everything was going so smoothly. What could have caused these problems? I am especially confused by the Disk Doctor messages inferring I have a "y" and "z" drive. thanks for your time.

I have Norton Utilities 2001 installed on my PC running Windows Me and I found it to be very helpful in removing and repairing alot of errors with my system ! Just like anything , knowledge of issuses with the product is the key to using it properly. For instance I found out from the symantec web site that when Norton Doctor is active , if you have the Disk Health sensor active , WinMe will not create restore points. Simply remove the Disk Health Sensor from Norton Doctor and the problem is fixed . Also if you have Norton Doctor active when going to the Windows Update site it may create thousands of 0 byte *.oem files in the Windows .inf folder. Visit symantec's web site for issuses with Norton Utilities 2002 ! Good Luck,Nick

Nick, I was aware of the issues you described, but thanks for your input. I've not managed to find anything at Symantec's site that suggests the cause of my problem. I am waiting for a response by email from Symantec. Thanks again.