There's an icon on my desktop that says Backup.bkf

It has a lovely little magic wand on it, but I really know what will happen if I try to open it to examine it. It's the Windows Backup File, and was created about a year and half ago (my computer is about 5 years old and Windows was intalled when I bought it.) If I attempt to delete it, I don't know if I'm deleting the backup or the backup PROGRAM. I don't know what's backed up on it - my files? my Windows software? both?

It takes up 10.4 GB, so if I don't actually need this back up, you can see why I would like it gone - my hard drive has a capacity of 37.2 GB.

I'm pretty clueless on the subject of backing up. Norton 360 says it automatically backs up my files. Windows Service Pack 3 (installed an hour ago) says it backed - something, I don't know what - my files? operating software? both?

Maybe there should be forum folder just DEDICATED to "Should I Delete This?" questions. In the meantime, please tell me, should I delete this?.bkf is a backup file created by the Windows Backup program, if it's not been updated for 18 months it's well out of DATE and you can delete it.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 backs up the files which will be changed when SP.3 is installed.

Norton 360, well I don't know much about that but anything named Norton or Symantec is banned from my system.

Regardless, those backups are sitting on your hard disk drive, think about what you will not be ABLE to replace if the hard drive fails (and they do fail catastrophically) and nothing can be retrieved from it. Critical files backed up on your hard disk should also be backed up on some other media such as cd or dvd disks.

Good luck