Desktop.ini Question

[Juniper]

I had an odd occurrence happen today. Would like to get some feedback on what might have been the issue.

I have my OS installed on my SSD and my HDD is mostly for data, although I have a few old games installed on it as well.

I noticed the last month this has happened, I've been busy so didn't try to figure it out until now, every time I would open one folder (that contained about 15 other folders) explorer would hang for a really long time. It would show 2 folders but then take about 5-10 seconds to show the rest of them. So I defragged my HDD (it was pretty bad, about 40%) and thought okay, it'll be fine. But it wasn't, that folder still hung. Of course I though well my HDD is going to die on me. To test it, I copied this folder of folders to another location (and when copying it said there was an error copying the desktop.ini file). My first thought was why on earth is there a desktop.ini file "there." So I skipped it and just copied the rest. When I went into this backup version, it loaded instantly. So of course it was the desktop.ini. I located which folder the desktop ini was in, via search, went to this folder specifically but couldn't open it. Now why there would be an .ini file in a folder of one of my old games is beyond me. I have no idea how it was created.

I ended up having to delete the original game folder completely. Even clicking it to delete it made it hang. And deleting it from my recycle bin took forever too. Finally it is gone. I wanted to take a look at the desktop.ini file, but I couldn't get to it because the folder just would not open, all I could do was delete the entire thing.

So what is with these desktop.ini files? They seem to pop up in really random places. I have 2 on my desktop at the moment also. One lets me read it, the other one says "Access Denied."

Can anyone here shed some light on why the .ini file I disposed of was created in such an odd location and how it got corrupted? And is there any way to see what is inside the normal one on my desktop that is giving me the access denied?

Thanks!

 

[Dude]

Welcome to Sevenforums Juniper

They are windows config files, use this tutorial to hide hidden files.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/394-hidden-files-folders-show-hide.html

 

[Juniper]

Thanks for the welcome. I've been reading these forums for most of my win 7 needs over the last year. Very useful info here. I decided to finally make an account.

I actually don't want to hide the .ini files. Well I probably will again soon. But I specifically made them visible when I discovered the error. I'm interested to find out why one would have been created in an obscure game folder on my data HDD and then subsequently corrupted itself.

 

[Dude]

Thanks for the welcome. I've been reading these forums for most of my win 7 needs over the last year. Very useful info here. I decided to finally make an account.

I actually don't want to hide the .ini files. Well I probably will again soon. But I specifically made them visible when I discovered the error. I'm interested to find out why one would have been created in an obscure game folder on my data HDD and then subsequently corrupted itself.

I don't think its corrupted, it's a protected system file. If I am misunderstanding you maybe someone else can chime in.

 

[Juniper]

I'm not really sure how else to describe it. I was mildly interested to know of a way I could read my desktop.ini file located on my desktop.

But my real problem (which I fixed), was that there was another desktop.ini file located in my data drive... E:\Games\OldClassics\Ecoquest2 to be exact. It was in the folder which contained my game EcoQuest2. And over the last month, every time I would attempt to open the folder OldClassics, it would take a very long time for explorer to display the folders within. I was able to figure out by trying to backup the files that within my EcoQuest folder there contained a desktop.ini that was causing this incredible slowdown. I could not even open the folder, I had to delete the entire thing, and now everything works again.

I'm curious as to why a desktop.ini file would have been created there, when I don't have any in any of the other game folders and why it would have caused my system to freeze every time I tried to open or even click on the folder, Ecoquest2, that contained it.

Also, I know it was the desktop.ini specifically because when I backed up the game folder, everything copied over except the .ini file. And accessing that folder is now perfectly fine after I deleted the one containing the .ini

 

[nilank]

Desktop.ini are hidden files that are found inside many folders and the desktop. These files hold information about the folder's icon setting and it's view/folder type (whether general, music, videos, etc.) settings too.

No need to worry.