A file with the name "~" keeps reappearing on my desktop. I think it may have something to do with email or maybe it's caused by a virus?

Could this be as a result of spyware? Obviously something is wrong even though I do take considerable care to make sure that my computer is uninfected and not bogged down with spyware.

I have taken your advice and run a spyware checker regularly and have carried out a full virus scan but this file with the symbol as a name still keeps coming up and I know that can't be correct.I wrote about this in October of last year in column number 41.

The file with the "~"symbol as it's only name is caused by an error in Microsoft security patch Q330994 which is part of Outlook Express.

Therefore, you're correct in thinking that it does have something to do with e-mail. Every time you make in addition to your address book, for example, by writing to a new correspondent, your address book will change and a new version of this file will appear on your desktop.

Here's what I said the first time around with some additional notes at the end; 'this little file is a harmless but erroneous byproduct of keeping your computer up-to-date.

A (then) recent Outlook Express update from Microsoft mistakenly places a copy of your Windows Address Book on your desktop.

Your Address Book, is where the names of your e-mail recipients are stored. Outlook Express has always created a copy of the Address Book but a bug in the update apparently causes the copy to be placed in the wrong location and with ~ as the truncated name.

You can simply rename it *.wab to see that it is indeed a copy of your Address Book.

Apparently, the people who take care of this stuff at Microsoft are aware of this bug and hope to fix it in the near future. By the way the strange symbol (~) is a tilde.

You will find it somewhere on your keyboard in one of the less often used locations.

It is sometimes used in describing command lines in computer code. I use it when creating directories in Windows Explorer because a directory name with a tilde in front of the first letter will be conspicuously placed at the top of the alphabetic hierarchy even ahead of the letter 'A'.

That was the position four months ago and apparently Microsoft has still not come around to fixing the problem. It can be annoying but that's the extent of the danger.

The only way to stop the file from being continually created is to uninstall the aforementioned patch. You can do this by going to the Control Panel and then Remove Programs, but I wouldn't.

You should be aware that the patch, Q330994, was created to make it more difficult to allow worms and viruses to spread in e-mail generated by your PC. You're probably better off leaving the imperfect patch doing its job until Microsoft gets around to finishing the fix.I never even realised that Microsoft Windows Updates were available and certainly not that they were important until I read your recent column on their purpose and the need to keep up with them. Subsequently, when I went to the Windows Updates site for the first time I was amazed at all the improvements and changes that were available to me.

Apparently, judging by the description Microsoft gave for each of the additions, many of them should be making substantial improvements to my computer and that's OK with me and, sure enough, everything has been fine until recently.

Now, although I am the only User on my XP computer, I find that when rebooting the computer a new User account has been created called ASP.NET Machine A?

What the heck is this and can I safely get rid of it?

When I want to restart my computer I want it to return to the Desktop on its own but now its sticks at the login stage every time, or is this new user a sign that I've been successfully hacked? Eventually, if you work your way through the available Windows updates, you will probably notice the sudden appearance of this new user.

The ASP.NET Machine account is created when the Microsoft.net framework 1.1 is installed in a Windows XP computer.

I can't understand why Microsoft thought it could go ahead and create this new user account on people's computers without first informing them and then expect the new edition not to bother people or to go unnoticed.

You can go ahead and remove this account, however, it is vital if you are creating.net applications that are intended to run using Microsoft Internet information server.

If that is the case by removing the account you may find some of your projects will no longer function correctly.

If you're never going to run a web server on your computer and have no plans to develop applications using the Visual Studio.net you can safely remove the account.

So, should you remove the account from your computer?

Here's a clue as to which category you fall into, if you can't understand the two preceding paragraphs, you, like me, don't need the ASP.NET Machine account.

What I do to get rid of it is I go to Control Panel, click on Users, which, using the Category View, is usually the bottom one on the list. Highlight, User Accounts, right-click on the offending account (ASP.NET Machine) and delete it.

Just to be prudent I always choose the option to keep the attendant files. When you reboot the Phantom User will be gone.

If you change your mind, and you won't, it will still be possible (although a bit tricky) to recreate the ASP.NET Machine user account by issuing the following command from the run dialog (changing the framework version number as appropriate) %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_regiis.exe /i.