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Nick
Asked: 2009-11-15 05:37:21 +0800 CST

SQL Server installation leaves odd hotfix folders on the root

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I have about a dozen weirdly named folders, for example 5e812807b3e1b04248ed046794a01b, on my d: drive after installing SQL Server 2008.

Inside each folder are two subfolders: 1033 and hotfixexpress

\1033\eula.txt \1033\finalsql2005information.rtf \1033\hotfix.rll \1033\sqlhotfix.chm \1033\sqlse.rll

\hotfixexpress\files\sqlexpr.exe

I get access denied whenever I try to delete any of these files / folders. I tried again after stopping all SQL server services, without luck.

Any ideas?

sql-server

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    i had many of these hex-named folder after SQL Server 2005 components failed to install and i finally figured how to delete them.

    • restart and get into Safe Mode (F10)
    • when computer reboots after CMOS display. logon with your
    • username/password (if applicable).
    • for each folder on the C drive, right-click, select Properties select
    • the Security tab select Administrator
    • select Full Control (all properties should be selected), select OK.

    you should be able to delete the folder.

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  2. Solved! Here is what I did, so others can use this if it helps. For a while, it seemed nothing could get rid of them…

    1. (Lots of stuff that didn’t work, false starts, etc., attempting to change ownership, etc. The “special privileges” on the files caused everything I tried to fail. I had some limited success with changing the owner of individual files to my UserID, but that was hit and miss, and very slow for trying to deal with 700+ files.
    2. Enabled the local Administrator account login for MYMACHINE. The password got automatically changed (group policy settings at our shop?) when I rebooted, so not sure this accomplished anything until later on. The command I used was: net user administrator /active:yes
    3. Disabled UAC from the command line of the Administrator account. Not sure this wound up accomplishing anything either.
    4. Did Cut and Paste to move all the folders to C:\Temp folder. This actually moved the files! I tried this in random thrashing around, and was surprised it was successful at moving the files. Note that the original problem still persisted, that I still could not delete any files from the subfolders of the Temp folder, about 8GB worth of space hogging files.
    5. Started up a Command Prompt, running as Administrator.
    6. Changed the password on the MYMACHINE\Administrator account to “mypw5678!”
    7. Executed the following TAKEOWN command, to take ownership of the files (assign ownership to Administrators group):
      TAKEOWN /S MYMACHINE /U MYMACHINE\Administrator /P mypw5678! /F C:\Temp*.* /A /R This command takes ownership of everything under the Temp folder. The /S /U and /P parameters tell the command to run in “remote” mode, using the UserID and Password of the local Administrator account I had enabled. The /A parameter tells TAKEOWN to set the owner to the “Administrators” group, of which I am a member. The /R parameter tells the command to recurse through all subfolders and operate on all matching files there. The command ran without errors and listed all the files processed.
    8. Executed the following ICACLS command:
      ICACLS C:\Temp*.* /grant myuserid:F /T /C This command grants “:F”ull access to user myuserid for all the files and folders under C:\Temp. The /T parameter says to recursively run the command against all matching files and folders in the subfolder Tree below. The /C parameter says to continue processing even if errors are encountered on some files. The command ran without errors and listed all the files processed.
    9. After this, I was able to use Windows Explorer to go in and delete all the folders below C:\Temp, with no further tweaks.
    10. Disabled local Administrator account login. The command used was net user administrator /active:no

    Note: Most of the junk files and folders were from failed installs of SQLExpress 2005, a Windows update that applied to my system. For some reason, the update failed about 30 times in a row before succeeding, and then left 8GB of garbage install files in hex-named folders at the root of my C: drive. Folders had names like C:\1ebc183d41d6a20786b98480ace73e C:\1ef15ba4dd35fb37f7e76a4e10deea C:\2a6a3f60d7adb185704e2a … … C:\ae4d3d733fcf5c529a858376cc2f39 C:\faafc48c46823ebe5c58bc

    Good luck, sorry for the formatting, copied directly from an Outlook Email, and I hope this saves someone the hours of frustration it caused me.

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  3. From answer 1 above I was surprised that I could move them. I created a '0temp' folder in C so that it appeared right above all the dodgy folders. I was able to drag each dodgy folder into 0temp then just delete 0temp and all its contents. - Tried it first with just 1 subfolder.

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  4. For me I was able to cut and paste the folders into the temp folder. Then I selected them all, made them all read-only and then not read-only. Then I was able to simply delete.

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  5. I've had luck in deleting these type of folders after a reboot. It's not the ideal solution, but it works.

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  6. Move offending data to new folder on desktop, right click said folder, uncheck 'read only' box on the properties tab. Delete folder, all is good ;)

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