A "~" file appears on the desktop after my user makes a change to his address book in OE

Hiya,

It sounds like his PC is setup with the desktop as the temp directory, check the environment variables settings under the advanced tab under the my computer properties to see what folder is set to temp.


Best regards

Engellan

looks like a dos character for long filenames

Mabye the window needs to be expanded that holds the address book then press F5 to refresh the screen

There are references in the Registry to BOTH long file names and short (8.3) file names for the same file.  Do a FIND under EDIT with REGEDIT and look for the 8.3 name containing the tilde character.  Delete that entry from the Registry and let the system take care of creating whatever it needs.

Before making the deletion, backup the Registry by EXPORTING it to C:\BACKUP\REGISTRY\YYYYMMDD.reg so that you have a fallback position if later testing shows any problems.

The 8.3 name is constructed by the system by abbreviating the long file name to XXXXXX~1.XXX, XXXXXX~2.XXX and so on.   This protocol is loaded with potential for errors, such as mergers of files from diverse sources.

Did she/he change OE to use an address book on the desktop?  
If my address book is set to "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\%Username%.pab" then I get the benifit of seeing it and quick access to it on the destop.  The side-affect is that whenever I edit it the "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\~%Username%.pab" file shows up during editing.  Sometimes dissappears when closed, or sometimes the file index agent (not now cause i turned that silly thing off) conflicts with the automatic removal of some temp files.


If on the other hand,  I set it to "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\~%Username%.pab" I can still right-click it and add a shortcut on the desktop.  I can do everything from that shortcut that I need to do, the indexer doen't conflict as much, and more importantly my desktop isn't showing a change when I have that file open for editing.

Good Luck,

2K
(\o/)

It indicates a Virus try to clean ur files from virus the problem will be solved

and remove any unknown command from Run services.

This is a virus. This is called "EML Virus".Please run latest Antivirus software on your computer. This might help you.

Thanking You

I have the same problem on a Windows 98 machine with IE6 SP1 and OE 6 installed. I tried removing the Q330994 patch and reinstalled IE and OE but to no avail. I even went back to IE and OE 5.5 and the problem remained. I can verify that the "~" file is my address book, you just rename it ~.wab and open and view the file. The wa~ file in the application data folder hasn't been updated since the Q330994 patch was installed, so that data is consistant with the accepted answer. I just can't seem to fix the problem. It must be somewhere in the application data or in common files.