Hi all!
I've just finished getting all the updates for my fresh, reformatted Windows installation and all seems okay except for one thing.
Despite the fact I'm sure I've been careful with the programs I've installed on my day-old Windows installation (scanning, checking MD5 hashes, etcetera), I've noticed that two files, both with the format "appXXYY.tmp-shm", appear in my AppData/Local/Temp folder whenever I log on, where XX represents a pair of letters shared between both files and where YY represents a pair of semi-random letters and/or numbers - for example, the ones on my system at the moment read "app4B70.tmp-shm" and "app4BCF.tmp-shm". The weird thing is these files just appear and do not remove themselves - if I log off and on again, two more files with the same format and file size of 32kb appear in addition to the current ones. They do not re-appear if I delete them, but as soon as I reboot/log off and on again two more appear with different letters/numbers after them.
I have never seen this ".tmp-shm" file type before and I can find absolutely no information about it online.
What brought me to ask about it here is that Process Monitor showed that AvastUI.exe carries out a lot of operations on these files at Logon before Explorer gets to it, including "CreateFiles", Generic Reads/Writes and locks, making me think this might have something to do with Avast. I was wondering if anyone might have experienced this as well or can perhaps shed some light as to what might cause it if it is related to Avast?
I've done a multitude of scans, both of my system and the files themselves using Avast, Malwarebytes and Spybot. All three have come up clean thus far. As I'm running a freshly reformatted installation of Windows and have not browsed any sites that I do not normally, I'm fairly convinced that it might not be outright malicious, however I would really like to know what causes it in the first place.
Many thanks for your help!
