Why do I have a reappearing "trash" folder and "hostsindex" file on my desktop (Mac OS X.6.6)

Asked by microspective (12

) January 20th, 2011

I delete them, and they reappear about a minute later. I have exhausted Apple, Google, et al to no avail.

The trash folder always says “no items” and the hostsindex file has no extension and contains no data. “Get Info” says nothing significant of either of these files.

I believe these first started appearing after I upgraded to 10.6.6, but I’m not positive they’re related.

Any ideas?

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2 Answers

Not really, but I also have 10.6.6 and don’t have these problems. Type “Console” into the Spotlight window. Click on the Applications icon.

A long page of error messages in code show up; there is a long list on the left side bar of interesting topics. I understand none of this, but you may.

gailcalled (54647

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Found the problem! I noticed that it was only happening when I was on Firefox. I used the web for an extended period on different browsers and the files never showed up. I opened Firefox: whammo! Unwanted empty files on my desktop. I disabled all my Firefox extensions one by one, restarted, then enabled each one (with a fresh Firefox restart after each enable). The culprit: DustMe Selectors. There was a setting in the prefs to save data to my desktop instead of the plugin’s folder. Case closed.

microspective (12

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