Weird appearance of the i_view32.exe in a totally random folder after installation

[darussiaman]

I did a fresh installation of IrfanView, latest version, after doing a reformat and reinstall of my WinXP (I was undoing a dual boot setup and other things). So, I installed IrfanView to the typical location of "Program Files" on drive C:.

On my desktop, I have this folder called "Applications" (shown in second screenshot, which depicts the top left corner of my desktop). And for some reason, at the same time as I made my install of IrfanView, the file i_view32.exe appeared in this folder! You can see screenshot below.

What is it, and why is it there? That's totally random, the installation directory was completely different. Thanks for any help.

[matera]

Ooo, a mystery. That is deliciously odd. What does its (right-click) Properties dialog have to say about it?

I hate to even speculate. Alarming thoughts about file system corruption could inspire nightmares. I have to admit I have seen almost stranger things (in my Linux installation, speaking of dual boot lol).

[darussiaman]

Well, I put a screenshot of that, too. It's the first screenshot, the one on the left. Then I looked at the properties of the "real" i_view32.exe in the IrfanView folder, and that screenshot is posted as well, the second one (on the right). In the case of the real i_view32.exe (the second screenshot), it says it was created, then modified. I think that that was because I tried re-installing IV after noticing this weird-ness the first time. (I deleted the first instance of the "fake" i_view32.exe and reinstalled to see what would happen. And it appeared again.) So, as you can see, the "modified" time in the "real" one (screenshot on the right) matches the "created" time in the "fake" file (screenshot on left).

Oh yeah, also note the difference in size. One is 0.0, the other actually has a size of several hundred KB.

[matera]

Well, the mystery file is obviously a figment of Windwoes' imagination -- but why is it dreaming it? *bangs head on desk*

Very peculiar things can happen when the operating system gets a notion. I saved an attachment yesterday and came up with a real wing-ding. I have a handy program called TextView that can read any file with no complaints about the content. I wanted to look at the .msg file that I had saved (stupid idle curiosity), and so I right-clicked on the folder it was in and chose TextView (my own context menu addition) -- and ended up looking into not that folder but --
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033

Nothing I could do would allow TextView to go directly into any folder that the silly useless .msg file was in, could only browse to there. It didn't affect IrfanView or my file manager or anything else. Strange Microsoft nightmare. It's still doing it. Because somehow that file "belongs" to Outlook, and TextView uses some bit of code library with an affinity -- words fail, I babble.

There are hidden associations that we can only wonder at. It might be the name of your folder that sidetracked some small branch of the process, that's all I can think of. It's an echo, a shadow of something that shows up there because...derrrrr...

[Laurent]

Hi darussiaman,

And for some reason, at the same time as I made my install of IrfanView, the file i_view32.exe appeared in this folder! You can see screenshot below.

After your captures, I doubt this fake i_view32.exe appeared at the same time as your installation:
- the installed i_view32.exe was created at 1:09:49 AM
- the fake one was created at 1:41:06 AM
That's half an hour later. I believe you created it inavertently yourself.

Laurent

[darussiaman]

After your captures, I doubt this fake i_view32.exe appeared at the same time as your installation:
- the installed i_view32.exe was created at 1:09:49 AM

Don't you see that it was modified at 1:41:04 am? This is the same time as the creation time of the "fake" file. As I said in my post above, I reinstalled IrfanView. This was done on top of the already existing installation, to see if the "fake" file would re-appear (That is, I did not uninstall IV before re-installing it). I noticed that this weird fake file had appeared after the first time, so I deleted it, then re-installed so as to experiment if it would happen again. Therefore, it's like re-saving a Word document or something ... the creation date points to earlier but you need to look at the time of modification in this case.

In fact, I looked in my recycle bin for the first one of these fake i_view32's, and here it is: I posted another screenshot. Now you can compare its creation time to that of the original creation time of the "real" i_view32.exe. 1:09:49 am vs. 1:09:58 am. So there.

So, any other ideas, anyone? Heh.