MSN Gaming Zone Can't Be Killed?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Martin
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Bill Martin

While scrounging through my XP-Home hard drive to find junk to delete, I
stumbled on a subdirectory:

Program_Files>MSN_Gaming_Zone>Windows

This directory has 24 files in it. I've never created it, I don't do
anything with MSN and certainly do nothing with gaming so it looked like a
likely candidate for deletion.

The thing is that I can highlight all 24 files and delete them and it
appears to work normally and the files are gone -- and do show up in the
recycle bin. But if I go back and look in that directory again all the
files are back in it again. They somehow magically return from the dead.
And if I delete them again, I'll now have two copies of all the files in the
recycle bin but new copies recreate themselves in the subdirectory.

Is this some "feature" of XP, or has some evil presence taken over the
machine? I've run Spybot, Adaware and Norton Anti-virus which all come up
clean.

Any idea what's going on here? Thanks.

Bill
 
Thanks Jerry. Some additional digging reveals that if you uninstall the
games XP defaults with it, deletes the MSN files -- still won't let you
delete the empty directories though.

I find it a tad bizarre that Msft puts these files in a directory mislabeled
MSN, and then makes them "magic" unlike any other file on the computer that
I've found. They must have thought they had a better idea I guess...

Bill
-------------------------------------------------
 
System files can not be deleted. It is to protect the end user from
themselves (always the worst computer menace).

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Check here:
add and remove programs - go to add and remove windows components - select
Accesories and utilities - click in details - you see the games with the box
check - select games and you see the games with the box check

i never did test this options....
 
I guess I would have thought game files were "applications" and not "system
files", but that's obviously my opinion not Microsoft's. They must feel
anything they include is a system file.

Bill
------------------------------------
 
Yes! I would think that anything included with Windows XP was a system file
also.

When people delete a necessary file necessary, Microsoft gets the call - and
YOU pay for the help. Therefore, it is protected.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
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