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Accepted
Ryan
Asked: 2010-09-30 10:27:19 +0800 CST

Why does my Win Server 2003 R2 have a bunch of empty folders in the root of the D: drive, each with a different random string of numbers and letters?

  • 772

On this server, I have a D: drive for data. What app could be creating empty folders such as:

9308c1f8cd5c852ef53a425e

75a2dde71d4ff73400cdb384fbbc

c8ad258c663ff0632c

They're created every few days, but are all empty.

This server is hosting:

  1. Trend Micro
  2. WSUS
  3. 1 SQL Server Express instance
  4. Aladdin HASP licensing
  5. IIS SMTP server
  6. File sharing

And receives regular updates. Thank you!

windows-server-2003 directory drive

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    These directories are created by the windows update service. The service usually extracts the updates in the drive with the most free space.

    As far as I know you can safely remove the directories if you're able to. In most cases you can't just delete the directories because the permissions are wrong and you first have to set the correct permisisions.

    • 5

  2. These are indeed windows updates. However I have seen Trend Micro create these folders also as part of their virus definition updates. I doubt this is the case though.

    A suggestion may be to move your c:\windows\softwaredistribution folder to another partition or drive on the machine. You would have to stop the MS update service, move the folder to another drive/partition and create a symbolic link between the 2 locations, then restart the service.

    This may stop the update service from dumping into the root of C: and dump instead into the root of the other drive/partition.

    I have not tried this, but am pretty sure it would work.

    cheers Ian

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