Whats these funky folders appearing on drive?

[Naudian]

Windows is installed on C:, but on drive D:, theres 3 folders that have appeared and I wanna get rid of one.

The two that I guess should stay are called:
"695b518e914570b41599" and "bb2e15c5c5ef2bd7c17a5298"
and theyre something to do with the service packs because they have folders in them called sp1 and sp2...it wont let me access those folders though, so I couldnt delete them anyway...

The one that I think I can get rid of but aint sure yet is called:
"ed555bdd8e372db" and its got a crapload of stuff in it. It all looks important but it must not be because I put it in the recycle bin for a while and everything still works fine, so I just wanted to ask yus if its important before I delete it...

heres some of its contents...

 

[sinkoman]

Looks to me like a virus, as those are assorted driver and update files that would probably be spread over dozens of files, not just one, and located on C:.

Do a scan first, and see what comes up.

 

[duffers20]

Have you recently downloaded and ran a service pack 1 or 2 installer? because I think, and this may not be correct, they are the temp folders that the installer extracts the files to for installation. Just an idea, probably wrong.

 

[Naudian]

Thats probably all they are, temporary files for some service pack whateverness.
Im gettin rid of them...and if something breaks, I'll just have to endure formatting my pc, which will be a pain for me because of all the crap I'd need to backup (momma uses pc too, lots of her important work and crap spread out all over the place)

 

[Ti133700N]

It all looks important but it must not be because I put it in the recycle bin for a while and everything still works fine, so I just wanted to ask yus if its important before I delete it...

They are not important if you don't want to roll back the installation of the Service Pack.

Why do you want to delete things in the Windows folder, you don't have alot of HD space?

 

[Cole]

Heres what you do. Select them, right click and click hidden. As long as you have it so you don't see hidden folder you don't have to worry.

 

[sinkoman]

Heres what you do. Select them, right click and click hidden. As long as you have it so you don't see hidden folder you don't have to worry.

That's stupid. If you know what your doing, hidden folders are essential.

And as for deleting them, if you are REALLY warry, create a system restore point, go to www.ubcd4win.com and make a boot cd, then burn the files to a disk. Now, if something goes wrong you just roll back to the restore point. If you can't boot into windows, boot up the uwbcd and from there, replace the files with the files you burnt to the cd.

God, the uwbcd really saved my can the other day though. Saved me from a much unwanted reformat after a botched motherboard driver update.

 

[jabberwock95]

This reminds me of the time I wrote a visual basic script to create lots of wierdly-named files on a drive, and replace them after two seconds if they were deleted. Confused the hell out of my school-friends. :E

My ultimate goal was to make these files self-replicating unto infinity, but my visual basic knowledge meant I had to settle for twenty. Still annoying though, and you could create any file type you wanted. I think I used text files, containing the words 'You are infected with the curse of the self-preserving text files. Sorry.'

Ah, happy days.

 

[sinkoman]

This reminds me of the time I wrote a visual basic script to create lots of wierdly-named files on a drive, and replace them after two seconds if they were deleted. Confused the hell out of my school-friends. :E

My ultimate goal was to make these files self-replicating unto infinity, but my visual basic knowledge meant I had to settle for twenty. Still annoying though, and you could create any file type you wanted. I think I used text files, containing the words 'You are infected with the curse of the self-preserving text files. Sorry.'

Ah, happy days.

Me smells hackers.

 

[NeptuneUK]

hey, i had the same problem. turned out to be spyware. get microsoft antispyware it should get rid of them if it is. try virus scanning too.

judging by the contents they 'appear' to be windows files. just check to make sure!

 

[jabberwock95]

Me smells hackers.

Hardly hacking, just a joke program

It consisted of about 10 lines of code, and looped. I wouldnt call it 'hacking' seeing as the file had no way to spread other than me copying it onto a computer. Besides, the only vaguely malicious thing it did was to be annoying.

I also made one that flashed the lights on the keyboard. It kept me busy during all those dull technology classes. :E