Hello friends,
While looking for a backup of some bookmarks, I discovered a strange phenomenon.

I set my folder options to show hidden files and folders, I then began looking for the backup file on an external hdd. Lo and behold I see all these grayed out Acrobat icons. They're everywhere, they look like a copy of every file on two external hard drives, except they're only 1kb in size.

Any idea as to what they are, or how they got there?

Thanks, cb

Ooookay, that screenshot was worthless, let's see if this is any better.

At one time it looks as if some graphics software program was run that created .dcm files. If you installed and
ran GalleryPlayer it may have done something like that when it ran the first time. I've never used the software
but you can go to their website GalleryPlayer, Premium High Definition Images for your HDTV - Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

Thanks brenhamite, I have never downloaded or used that program.

Any other ideas? Are these things harmful in any way?

I wouldn't think deleting them would be a problem, but leave the deleted ones in the recycle bin for a while, just to be safe. Then use your computer as you normally would and see if any issues pop up.
My son one time installed some software that searched his computer, found and renamed all of his graphic files to it's own proprietary format , then moved them into it's own directories so at least whatever program did this just created a similarly named file but left your originals, which was good.

Funny you should mention that, I did delete a bunch of them, but then I got scared and restored them.

The biggest mystery to me is, why do they all have an Adobe Acrobat icon? Clearly they're not all PDF files. And why are they only on my external hard drives?

Thanks brenhamite, I guess the staff here must be a little busy, I appreciate your help.

While I certainly appreciate brenhamite's opinion, I was wondering if perhaps a staff member could take a look at this and please advise.

Thanks!