Yikes! Shortcuts from hell. The devil's in my machine!

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

FlitchGlitch_at_NOSpamISP.net
Date: 06/11/04 

Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 04:04:27 GMT

What on earth is the problem with Bill? Get this: I buy a new machine
with XP installed... that's installed on Disk 0 which of course is C.
After notifying Bill of my existence and getting rid of some of the
baby-talk and nanny-isms I add in my old HD as Disk 1, D through I.

The old HD (Disk 1) had all sorts of obsolete junk, some of which may
of course prove useful in the future, so I copied the maybe-useful
stuff over to a directory on C called "OldCDrive". Suddenly I find
shortcuts to programs etc from Win3.1, DOS 6.2, NT, and Win2K sitting
in C:Documents and Settings\User\Recent. I never created these.
Methinks that Nanny Bill has been sticking his nose where it isn't
wanted and creating these automatically.

Apart from the waste of space, this might create installation
difficulties. This came to my notice because I'm about to install
WinZip and I noted that I have an old WinZip 3.1 GRP and a Winzip.INI
file left over from the mid-nineties when I had a demo copy. Nanny
Bill has created in XP a shortcut to the .INI file What's going to
happen when I install the current 32 bit program?

OK, you're not responsible for the silliness of Bill but you can tell
me:

1) can I crush (delete) everything in C:Documents and
Settings\User\Recent? Now and often in the future?

2) How do I stop XP from noticing these things and creating shortcuts
other than when I explicitly tell it to?

And while we're at it: What are these little files "thumbnails.db" I
find all over the place? How do I stop THEM breeding?

Are there any other little nasties that I haven't yet found?

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