> -----Original Message-----
> For the past month my hard drives have picked up strange
> subdirectories that consist of a very long chain of
> \<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<\<<
> and so on for hundreds of repititions.

I think this was discussed recently, and the verdict was that it's a Trojan
Horse, not a virus.  Trojan Horses are programs that claim to be one thing,
but do something different and malicious when run.  If you at any point
downloaded a file and executed it but found that it didn't do what you
expected (or maybe didn't do anything noticeable at all, except perhaps spin
your hard drive) then this was probably the culprit -- it keeps creating new
directories and subdirectories, all called << and so forth, until your drive
is full.

If I'm right about all this, you just need to spend the time and clean it
all up in explorer, and then make certain that you don't run that program
again.  I don't think the problem will reoccur unless you execute the file
again.

Good luck, and I hope I know what I'm talking about.
-Andrew Stadlen