What is <user>.V2 ?

I noticed this morning that there is new directory in my 'Users' folder which is my user account name + .V2.... <user>.V2. I did not create this but it does have a creation date of Nov 13th 2008. Could this be at all dangerous? Does anyone know what it came from? Nothing shows up scanning with AVG, Ad-aware or spyware terminator, so i'm not -that- concerned with it... Still, i don't like that i didn't create it and its there. It seems to be a copy of the primary user folder that its named after. AND its only on my user account, not my wife's.

Thanks for your opinions,
Dustin

Hello Dustin,

Do you share files on this PC from an XP computer with the same username?

If this is the case it may be caused by certain differences in the implementation of roaming profiles between XP and Vista. It would be more usual on a Domain based setup but if deferences exist in the structure of a local and roaming profile, it may be created in a workgroup. In this case it may be safely deleted.

Have a look at discussion here ...

User.v2? - dslreports.com

If this is an isolated machine however I would advise you to scan for malware with Spybot S&D and malwarebytes.

Spybot-S&D!

Malwarebytes.org

No the only other machine in the house is a Vista Home Premium laptop. Do you think Spybot and/or Malwarebytes would find something that ad-aware and avg did not?

The only other thing authorized to copy anything on the machine is Acronis, but of course that's just imaging/backup to a separate external drive.

Hi Dustin,

It could just be some type of glitch that has caused the creation of the extra User branch, Hopefully that's the case.

I would however, recommend that you do a full scan with both the packages as they are specifically targeted against Trojans and the like, and there removal, whereas AVG and ad-aware are more tailored to stopping virus attacks getting onto the machine.

Both packages are free for private use and are useful additional tools to keep available, they will quite often find things that others do not, unfortunately, due to the multi-pronged nature of today's malware attacks we have to take the same route to stop them.

Hopefully, as I said above this is not malware, but it's worth while checking.