Growing Number of Invisible XP Files

[garage door]

For the last 10 months or so, Norton has been finding files on our hard drives that do not show up in the Windows tally. There is a LARGE difference.

Windows sees 186,000 files.
Norton Antivirus sees 612,000 files.

This number has grown steadily over the last about 10 months.

Besides Norton Internet Security, we have several anti-spyware/malware programs active on our computer including Spyware Doctor, Counterspy, and Spybot. None of these seem to have a problem with these "invisible" files.

What can be the problem?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

By default, Windows Explorer hides system files, and files / directories with "hidden" attribute set.

The file count difference could be caused by XP's System Restore (a lot of hidden files in C:\System Volume Information, if C: is your system partition).

 

[Tedster]

some security files like zonealarm etc also write log files. Over time these accumulate. Whether or not they hide these files is another question.