# Strange icon appearing on the Wife's mac desktop

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Monday, 04-May-2015 11:37:54

Ok this is a little weird, She told me about this as She was heading out the door.
On Her desktop next to Macintosh HD there is what looks like a mount point -- my interpretation, not her words. It's title is a series of punctuation and numbers. She didn't know how it got there, and when She tried to drag it to the trash it went. She emptied the trash only to have it back on the desktop.
I had Her right-click and do reveal in Finder and it looked to show Her applications, libraries, etc. So I'm guessing it is some sort of Time Machine backup.
I did not have Her start one, nor do I have that running at the moment. Yes, I know, we need to do that, and I will eventually here once Her situation has settled some and I've bought an external drive that will go wireless over my Apple Airport Extreme base station router.
Anyway, wondering if any of you know where this could be coming from / how I can get rid of it off Her desktop. She's quite a conservative user for the most part and doesn't do the sorts of things that attract malware / viruses -- not that one of these would establish a mount point that looks like a backup containing applications, library, etc.
I suppose I could have Her log in and then turn on VoiceOver and do the damage myself.
Where do you go to access your desktop icons anyway? I mean in Terminal.
If this thing isn't a backup, it might just be an alias, but it's pointing to Her hard drive's content, that much I can vouch for.
Thanks for any info,
Leo

## Post 2 by Ed_G (Zone BBS is my Life) on Monday, 04-May-2015 15:36:05

Hi Leo. It may be worth seeing if it ejects by highlighting it and and pressing
command e. It sounds like it's some sort of disc or disc image if it's appearing
on the desktop next to the Macintosh HD, though I'm not sure what would have
created it.

## Post 3 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Tuesday, 05-May-2015 10:19:52

Hey Ed, thanks. So I had Her revisit the situation last night, come to find out it wasn't next to Her Macintosh HD, it *was* Her Macintosh HD, it got renamed somehow.
It's all rectified now, simpler than I expected it to be. She just found it all in a flurry and a rush yesterday morning and it scared Her. I've never turned on VoiceOver on Her mac as She's usually pretty independent now with it -- far easier than Windows for Her in many ways.

## Post 4 by chojiro (Newborn Zoner) on Tuesday, 05-May-2015 10:23:46

One way to quickly find out what this is would be by choosing "Get info" instead
of "Reveal in Finder." But if you suspect this is a time machine backup, you
probably have the Time Machine in the status menus. The icon for the backup
should be different than those of a mount point/external volume, but this is
sometimes a bit off if you have upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite.
Regardless, if you're unsure what the icon is, you can use the Get Info option to
find out. IF you deleted it from the trash, it certainly should not reappear again
if you have Time Machine off. If it is a mount point, it won't let you put it in the
trash until it is ejected, by which point it won't be on the desktop unless you put
it there for some reason. Finder tends to complain about this like, a lot.
Knowing some of the info from that dialog would help.

## Post 5 by chojiro (Newborn Zoner) on Tuesday, 05-May-2015 10:24:58

Disregard my other post then. That's great to hear. :)
I did think that sounded a little odd. In fairness, renaming Macintosh HD is
really easy to do.

## Post 6 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Tuesday, 05-May-2015 15:33:06

Well She was all aflutter, and I was making the unfortunate mistake we engineers often do: overthinking it.
Again, thanks though and I will remember what you've posted here, could be helpful in the future.