Strange Folder in Windows

Under the C:\Windows directory I have 10 entries like:

$NtUninstallQ319580$

They are all a bit different but I dont know what they are and some are several meg. Can I remove them?

 

These folders are the updates to your O/S that you did at Windows Update. They should not be deleted.

 

I dunno Barbara-Ann. I think you only need these if you want to be able to uninstall the update at some point.

I usually leave mine a week or so to make sure nothing broke and then delete them. No problems so far.

 

I blew all mine away and never looked back. Never missed them yet! Like Newt, I did wait a properly safe time though.

BTW, once you delete them from the Windows directory, you'll want to go to Control Panel Add/Remove and clear them one at a time by selecting them and answering Yes to clean it off the list.

 

Only 10 $NTUninstallQ??????$ folders, huh? I had 27 Hotfix folders totalling 26.7MB. They were hidden and compressed to 16.7MB, though.

I decided to keep mine after one experience attempting a Repair installation of Windows XP. Upon doing so, Setup looked for the Via hardware driver installation in a user Temp folder (which I had purged.) Because it wasn't available immediately, I skipped it, thinking I'd go back and install the OEM drivers later. That deactivated the AGP feature and CHANGED my GUID, and I had to re-activate Windows! Installing the drivers later didn't restore my original GUID. The online re-activation failed, and I had to get it done by a human tech. He laughed, told me it was a common unforeseen consequence.

Call me twice shy, but I've been wary about removing installation traces ever since. I use the Disk Cleanup tool. It doesn't attempt to remove those folders, so that, and the fact that they're hidden by default, might be a *hint* to most users that they *could* be handy later. Subjective call, though, I admit.

 

I dunno either - but I HAD to delete alla mine. Nortin Anti-Virus scan kept getting stuck on them and somehow there were litteraly hundreds of new files created... took over 48 hours to clean 'em out. I let the scan run for 18 hours the frst time, 36 hours the 2cd time then ran chkdsk which deleted 'em. This is on a practically new WinXP home edition files were in C:\RecoveryBin\Volume6-DA314e4-8ea8-1/d6f\RECYCLER\NPROTECT\

There were over 300,000 files in that directory... I still don't know whether to call Norton, MS or just hope it goes away! It may be Zone Alert, altho I had rin both AntiVirus Scan and Disc Alert together for several weeks before this mess happened outta the blue. Any ideas are welcome.

Olereo - rank amachoor

 

olereo,

Those were files already deleted that were being protected by Norton Protected Recycle Bin. NProtect acts like a second-level Recycle Bin. You have to delete stuff as many as three times to actually remove them from the File Allocation Table listing (Master File Table in NTFS.) Read your Norton documentation about how to empty the NProtected files.

My guess is you previously had some kind of threat, which was quarantined by Norton AV, you deleted the quarantined files, and they were being still protected by NProtect, and being detected there by later scans. Sounds like you may have had two antivirus programs? Some conflict when they detect virus signatures in each others' database.

Recycle Bin, either Windows generic, or Norton Protected do tend to accumulate lots of files unless you empty them regularly. You need to do that to free up disk space because deleted files will continue to occupy space until you empty the Recycle Bin.

 

I've got 7 Windows XP Hotfix (SP1) entries in the add/remove section of Control Panel, but 9 of those $NtUninstall folders in my windows directory. Are you saying it's safe to delete all of those from both add/remove and the windows directory?

 

dkline,

I'm in to my 5th month since deleting mine and I haven't been asked for them since. I must admit, I just added a new one today and I'll keep it for a while. It covers one of their security hole regarding certificate authentification.

It may well be subjective, as rtimai says, but for me it has caused no problem to delete them. If you are the least bit paranoid, leave them alone, since they take up very little space considering how big the modern drives are. 20 or 30 megs is peanuts now days.

I suspect they may be more of a convenience for MS than for you. They may see some need to hedge when issuing a patch. I hedge another way, keeping full backups. I can't think of any time that I would want to "Uninstall" one of their hotpatches that I couldn't do it another way better, since I use GoBack and also image my drive to a fully bootable copy on a bi-monthly basis.

I suppose the worse case wouold be if MS announced some sort of upgrade that required removing all/some previous patches and I didn't have an archive old enough to restore that "Uninstall" capability. I do not live in fear of such.

You must choose for yourself according to your own capabilities.

 

Thanks, Zephyr.

Generally I prefer my machine to be lean and mean, so away they go.

 

RTIMAI... Thanks for the info... I ran Nortons anti-virus scan last night... all night... I think it would run into next week if I let it.. Anyway, I've used only Norton's anti-virus for the past 5 years or so. This is a new pooter, tho and it came with N's anti installed,,, the guru who sold it ran stuff off my old disk (which is now donated to another) and the Norton 2002 SystemWorks was on that.. so maybe that is how there may be 2 anti-virus programs somehow - how, I can't imagine.... maybe I should delete all of N's SystemWorks, then re-install. Of course the virus library would have to be updated, but Norton's Update seems to handle that ok. Any suggestions or advice? Thanks a mill...

Reese

 

Reese,

Maybe you were using the term "delete" loosely -- but, you shouldn't delete entire programs from Windows. You should always use the Uninstall feature, or Norton CleanSweep if the uninstaller is damaged. Manually deleting binaries (non-document files) can leave all kinds of loose ends hanging in the Registry, with references to non-existent folders and files. As I said, maybe you really meant "uninstall" instead of "delete," but I thought I'd mention this.

Remember too that Windows XP running NT File System has all kinds of self-checking and self-repairing features that can thwart your attempts at manually changes. I've seen people applying old DOS instincts to Windows and totally trashing their machine.

From what you say, your computer may be a cloned setup, instead of a fresh install. If you keep having problems, the only real solution would be to start afresh by reformatting and re-installing. That way, you wouldn't have a hundreds of legacy settings causing hidden problems. Good luck.

You sound like a Prodigy refugee. I started off on GEnie, myself.

Roger

 

Of course, you are correct... I should say "uninstall" when removing programs - Being rather lazy, I find the uninstall Norton is faster than trying to chase down all of the stuff in the registry and other places I know not where. I've already uninstalled all of the other parts of Nortons 2002 system as they seem to really slow down this system. I've only been using Windows XP since late June so in this I am a rank beginner. Yup, started out with Prodigy when it was only $2.95/month. Of course that quicly jumped to $4.95 and rose along with th others. I also tried Genie, but phone connections were't the best... I believe we were still using 1200 then... I stayed with Prodigy and CompuServe well into the Win 95 era... Dropped CS in '96 and *P in '99. Tried AT&T, very briefly AOL (a disaster) - still use MSN on direct dial but moved to cable in Feb this year... wife has MSN. I rather liked Genie - can't recall why I left them - sometime about when the internet started booming. Anyway, thanks for your info and hope the BBS pipple don't get too mad at the rather off subject stuff.
Reese

 

I may have you beat as "old timer in residence," Olereo, as I started using PCs in the days of CP/M and even employed the old Osborne "portable" computer (weight=28 lbs.) to cover the Afghan war (against the Soviets) in 1980. So that makes me, what, a bit over 39 years old?

Anyway, I was curious about your statement that Norton Systemworks seems to slow your PC down. I've got Norton Utilities 2002 on my XP system, and of course I've disabled all the parts (in Norton anti-virus, too) that run on startup. Are you saying that basic elements of Norton other than the anti-virus programs slow down the procesor?

 

Well, I really started using PC's in '82 - but before that worked with AFOS (National Weather Service pooters) Being 76 I do have a slight edge onyou in actual longevity.
I'm not sure what's slowing things down in XP and Norton... Of course it took forever to get through "start up" but I disabled all of that except Anti-Virus... That does seem to take awhile. The first time I run e-mail and transmit, the Norton Anti-Virus takes up to 35 seconds to awaken and check the e-mail... after the first time, tho it really whizzes through the e-mail virus scan. Now that's for "send "... I don't know how long it takes for it to check incoming e-mail... that's so fast I can't tell - anyway, I don't notice it... When I ran the speed check t'other day, it took almost 2 minutes(1'48 ") to open up for me to make a choice of what to do. I still haven't had a complete Norton Anti-Virus system scan since July 20... dern thing freezes up on that NPROTECT stuff... Oh well, at least the video's (DVD) work nicely.

 

Yeah, your system slowness doesn't sound right. Personally, I don't use any anti-virus scanning except a manual scan I do myself once a month or so (I think the virus fear is slightly exaggerated). So I don't have many of the problems you do on that score.

But you might have something else going on during bootup -- does it seem slow to you during the initial boot? If so, and if you want to find out why, get a program called bootvis (it's free) and it'll run a trace on everything that's happening during bootup and tell you what, if anything, is slowing you down.

 

dkline - just for clarification on your AV habits. Do you mean you do nothing with AV except for a monthly check? No inbound email? No http port 80? Or did you mean you only do a full system scan once a month?

olereo - I'm running the Norton Suite on XP-pro and a full AV check takes mine about 2 hours I think. I run it via the XP scheduler so it starts when I'm not around and finishes before I want to get on. I'm not sure right off how much data I have stored (probably way less than 10Gb) but yours certainly shouldn't be taking days or freezing at all.

I think an uninstall followed by running the removal program you can download from symantec (symcheck.exe or something similar) to remove any remaining pieces followed by a reinstall is in order.

I realize that you and dkline haven't been using computers all that long but you neither one are complete novices so surely we can get this thing sorted out. (I started in '63 ).

And you know, we lost something when CPM gave way to messy dos. Shame the CPM folks told IBM they weren't interested in customizing their OS for the IBM PCs.

 

Yep, I don't screen any incoming email -- just a once a month scan.

And yes, Newt, although I'm a relative newbie to PCs, I do remember (and long for ) the good old days of Wordstar 3.3, one of the greatest programs ever built.

^KD to you, my friend.