What is that 32 position numeric folder at the top of the Windows file list?

I'm trying to clean up my main 10 gig hard drive. I have windows 2000 running. Near the top of my list of folders is one
"5752a4bca7229...458a" that is 32 positions long! It is sitting on 216MB of storage I'd like to use for other things if I can.

First question: What is this folder and what is in it. It appears to be Windows applications of a sort but it appears that much of what is in here is in the windows subdirectories where the programs are actually being run when they run.

Second question: Is there any reason to keep this folder around?

Finially: Where did it come from in the first place?

Thanks in advance for your help.

TH_John
j.p.morton@att.net

 

If it is really a subfolder under windows, it was probably put there by some software you installed. Maybe uninstall information or something. Can't be sure without more information.

You could always try moving it to a new folder somewhere (junk or something) for a few days and see if you start having problems. If not, should be safe enough to delete it.

Could you post a list of the contents? Might help with ID on the thing.

 

Yeah, i have one that i wonder about:

C:\$OLD$W~1.~BT

How about it, can this be deleted..?? 3.7 megs of stuff in it.

 

(quote)
You could always try moving it to a new folder somewhere (junk or something) for a few days and see if you start having problems. If not, should be safe enough to delete it. (quote)

This is works well for me on these orphan files .

 

Hi.

I think you'll find that large named folder is a temp unpack folder for an OS update. It's usually killed after the update but if you attempted an update or stopped one in progress it might have been missed. The next time the update was run it made another folder with another string of 32 characters and deleted it when it was done. Change the name to something else by keying the first five or six letters like this in a dos box (goes to the root directory first).

cd \
ren 5752a4*.* 5752a4*.xxx

Leave it for awhile and if no faults come up then delete it. You can also note the files inside the directory and search for them on your hard drive and if you find most of them in system32 then it is just an unpack directory.

 

I think you are right that it is a temp OS update file that got overlooked for one reason or another. I've moved it off the C:/ drive and renamed it and it doesn't seem to be affecting anything so I'll be deleting it soon.

Thanks to all and Happy New Year!

John

 

Yep, i also did the same thing as TH and will be deleting soon...
maybe now...lol.