Strange ~ icon on desktop solved

I have seen a few posts around here about people getting a strange icon appearing on their desktop with a tilde sign ( ~ ) Mystery solved! It is the result of a windows update 330994 patch. You get the temp file after a change is made to your address book in Outlook express. You can see if you have the patch by going to IE....Help...About and seeing if the patch is listed there. I made a change to my address book this morning and "Bingo" the file appeared! Here is the info I obtained! Phewwwwww! Glad that's over with! One of the "fixes" from MS several months ago causes this glitch. What that file is (which I believe you will see is named "~") is your yourname.wa~ file which on my PC resides in C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book . That file is the backup for yourname.wab (the OE Address Book). But now, after the glitch, the .wa~ file is no longer getting updated when you make a change to Address Book. Rather it goes to your Desktop as "~" instead of to C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book as yourname.wa~. However, your Address Book, itself, is still getting updated. So unless you worry about the backup no longer being updated(what good is it, anyway??), you can delete the "~" file. Or if you cannot live without the updated backup .wa~ file, then just rename that suspicious "~" file to yourname.wa~ and send it to the C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book folder (replacing the existing and now outdated yourname.wa~ file). Supposedly MS was working on a fix many months ago, but I have seen no announcement of one yet, and none of the recent MS fixes have cured the problem. That "~" (tilde) file is most probably appearing as the result of installing the "April 2003, Cumulative Patch for Outlook Express (330994)". Microsoft is aware of the problem and is supposedly working on a fix. Many people are experiencing this problem and from what I've read about this problem that icon will also reappear when you reply to an e-mail and you have your Outlook Express set up to enter the persons e-mail address to your address book whenever you reply to an e-mail. You can either just put up with it or follow the uninstall directions for the patch at the link below. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/330994/default.asp Hope this answers the question for some people.