A Strange Folder has Appeared

[dennohue]

I have a large file of photos which I hold on an external hard drive. The drive was new (and formatted) and the pictures are held in a 'My Pictures' folder and accessed via a short cut.

I recently opened the hard drive in 'My Computer' and was puzzled to see that there was another folder there which is entitled:

84f4a64f6ee3d7910294aabf13 

If I open this folder, there are two folders:

and64 (3.66MB) & i386 (2.42MB)

I have no idea where these files came from and why they are there! Does anyone have any ideas? 

[Allan]

You can delete it. Those folders are sometimes created during updates.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Adding on to what Allan said. The reason these folders are often created is to store the files that are used during the upgrade and in many cases (not all) store the old files in case the update goes bad and you need to revert back.

Personally I don't usually recommend users delete these folders because most hard disk drives today are so big it doesn't really mater. But deleting it is also not going to cause you any issues. Often these folders are hidden so if you don't like seeing them and you have Windows showing hidden files you can re-enable the option to not show hidden folders.

[Allan]

Actually, I believe the folders to which the OP are referring are sometimes created during installation of MS Updates. They are temp folders which should be deleted after the update installs, but sometimes they aren't for no particular reason. They are perfectly safe to delete. These particular folders are not hidden. I do agree with Computer Hope Admin that hidden folders created during upgrades should usually be left alone.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Yeah you're probably right Allan. It's likely a folder related to a driver that was installed on the computer. If you've got a .inf file in the folder dennohue you could open it and it's likely it'll tell you what driver it was associated with. For example, looked on one of my computers here that had a similar folder and it was the "Microsoft system driver files for XPSDrv print drivers."

[dennohue]

Thanks Allan, 

I backed everything up, and then deleted the folder. Have checked and everything is AOK!

I have posted a thankyou.

[Allan]

You're welcome.