Windows Live Mesh Disaster

I have been using Windows Live Mesh without any problems, for at least a year, on four Windows 7 machines (2 desktop, 2 laptop). I haven't checked two of them, as they are (#1) in another location, and (#2) has been turned off for a month. This just occurred. Also, I have run a McAfee scan on the laptop, with no problems identified. I can't scan my primary desktop (which has 4 internal hard drives and 4 external drives) at this time because the scanning would interrupt an appellate brief that is due in 2 days.

Run a malwarebytes free scan first

http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

Post results.




Ded9

Did that; no results.

I also checked my office computer for this problem, and it had over 20,000 Windows Live Mesh files in the  recycle bin, all placed there in the past 5 days. I don't understand why Microsoft isn't all over this issue. I have deleted all of the Windows Live Mesh programs from my computers -- but would sure like to know what is happening here.

Seems like a known issue with live mesh.

Try the steps mentioned in this article



http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/LiveMesh/thread/bf6710f4-9d0a-433f-8ff9-4b6b3be88b28

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/LiveMesh/thread/a28e12b2-3b35-403f-ab8c-a379ec0ce109





Ded9

Nope. The issues described in the two links you proffered do not appear to be related to mine. In those discussions, the WLM user encountered a problem when he put a "meshed" folder inside another "meshed" folder. Also, that user was using a beta version of WLM.

I did not move any folders, or change any of my settings, on my 3 affected Windows 7 Pro computers. I do understand that it is possible only one machine has the problem, and that might be an issue that malwarebytes could deal with. I only ran malwarebytes on one machine, a laptop that had been most affected (5 days of stuffing the recycle bin. The other two, both desktops, had shorter runs (4 and 3 days, respectively).

At this point, I can't focus on this issue because I have an appellate brief I need to finish by Monday. I will run malwarebytes on the two desktops though, and will report those results when finished.

Put the computer in clean boot mode and then check whether files are getting deleted.


Clean boot process.

Clean boot process

Start-type - msconfig- click on startup tab- click disable all...then click services tab- put a check on hide all microsoft services ...and then click disable all....click ok and then restart the computer in normal mode.

If everything works fine in clean boot then enable five startup items and services at a time to find the faulty software.




Ded9

I have deleted the Windows Live Mesh program from 3 of my 4 Windows 7 machines. The 4th one is a small laptop that I don't use often, and when I get a chance -- probably Wednesday 1/18/12 -- I will start it up and can try your clean boot process.

I have assumed the problem lies with Microsoft's Live Mesh software, but perhaps the mesh program on one of my machines was compromised, and spread to the other three.

Also, the deleted files are gibberish text files. Windows Live Mesh synchronizes most kinds of files (not outlook .pst files, though), and I did not see any of those files in the recycle bin. If I was a nasty spammer, I would delete real files rather than just create meaningless files that fill up the recycle bin.

I should have figured this out faster, but I had been running live mesh on my Win 7 computers for some time now, and didn't catch this problem.