What is the worst that could happen if I delete every ADS Stream on my computer?

[HandsOff]

My problem is that uninstalling another program left (litteraly) thousands of ADS Streams on my computer.

Up until this point I never payed much attention to them. Anti programs would detect a few, but I never knew if I should delete them, so I just ignored them.

Now I cant ignore thousands of them, but I have no desire to manually go through 50,000 files and guess which ones might be needed.

I am very tempted to just wipe them all out...you know, sort of see what happens...



But not just yet...

- HandsOff

Hey wait? Did I post this in the wrong forum? Should it be in software and services? Well if I did, sorry!

[nick s]

Hi HandsOff,

For what it's worth, I've run Streams (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#streams) many times without any harm done.

Nick

[BlueZannetti]

Handsoff,

One way to think about this - wiping out the ADS's is equivalent to moving a file originally on an NTFS volume to an FAT32 volume and back to the original NTFS volume again. That's it. If the file can survive that, it can survive the loss of an ADS.

Blue

[RejZoR]

Only downside is that you might delete ADS that are used by other programs,thats all. ADS are never that crucial for system operation (at least i haven't seen them in such form).

[HandsOff]

That being the case I think I will go ahead and do it.

The only programs I remember seeing that had them had something to do with boot disk creation or hex editing. I can't remember anything that is currently installed having them.

If no ill effects are produced I may consider erasing ADS streams as part of securing the computer. It seems as though they are just loose ends.

I appreciate the responses. I was afraid it was one of those questions that would be ignored. If worst comes to worst I can handle reinstalling, but to have to find out later that it was an obvious mistake would make it that much worse!


- HandsOff