After moving some files around to reorganize the file system on my laptop, I noticed several weird icons on the Desktop. These file icons have names like [], [][], e| ¼[][], where the [] is of course a single character. On investigation of the Properties page for each icon I was able to discover that they were in fact ^N, ^F^N , e| ¼^F^N .Further investigation with cygwin64 revealed that the names were given as:
''$'\006\016',''$'\016','e|'$'\002''¼'$'\006\016',''$'\032''eu'$'\002''Ñ'$'\006\016'revealing another file that doesn't even show up on the Desktop. (It's probably significant that so many of them end in '\006\016'.)
These icons can be moved around on the Desktop, but cannot be dragged into the Recycle bin, or renamed or deleted using the context menu. I get error messages like 'file name does not exist or is too long'. Rename lets me enter a new file name over the highlighted old one, but task fails--old name is restored when I hit ENTER. Similarly drag-and-drop puts the icon over the bin, but it snaps back when I release the mouse, while Delete asks me the right questions but then complains that 'the file name you specified is not valid or is too long.'
Since these files collectively eat up about 500MB I'd like to free up that space. How do I go about it, given how resistant they seem to be?