Strange folders are appearing in 'C' root drive

I found someone mentioned that these created by Windows Update utilities. At least once windows update silently then these folders should be removed. These are just growing and growing in root drive !!

Hi Prabodha,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community. Apologize for the delay in reply. 

Please refer the link below for more information.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/how-to-hide-updates-in-windows-10-basic-method/57578ebf-f1b2-4088-83da-604f2c2d98fd

Hope the information is helpful. Feel free to write to us for any other assistance with Windows, we'll be glad to assist you.  

I don't know but you might try  basically rebuilding the normal download folders and files - maybe something there is stuffed up.  

Right click the start button & select Command Prompt (admin);

net stop bits
net stop wuauserv
net stop appidsvc
net stop cryptsvc

Ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.bak
Ren %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 catroot2.bak

Restart the computer and they will be rebuilt fresh automatically

Then after some time visit the folders in the \windows directory and delete them because they just waste space.

I have only started seeing these long hexidecimal folders in my E:\ drive since Windows 10. You can't delete the folders or even view the content. Inside some of these folders, there are subfolders called like "1025", "1028", "1030" etc and some contain files such as "eula.1025.txt", eula.1028.txt" etc. Some subfolders can't be viewed.

Eeshwar Kumar's response isn't relevant to me. I don't wan't to HIDE or stop updates, I just want to ensure that these folders, IF used for updates, ARE removed once the updates are applied to my system. One assumes that they can't easily be deleted because they are in use, but as you can see from the image of some of my E:\drive, some date back to August 30! Surely these files are no longer needed for updates?

That they more than clutter the working folder on my E:\drive (NOT in my Windows folder on my C:\ drive BTW), is a pain. Microsoft surely should clean-up after itself?

I have read various posts about this issue but I still have not seen a definitive answer.

This still happens, though likely with different software updates.

Could you please do something, Microsoft? Direct these folders to Windows Temp-folders for good, and then find out how to fix random update folders being downloaded repeatedly, without notifying the user about what to do.

I found the source of the installations in my system.

Cold Turkey 2.0 was inducing the installations that left the remnant folders for me.

See this thread for explanations on how I identified the source of my installations.

But basically, what I did was compare the date on which the logs of the C++ Installations in "C:\Windows\Temp" started to appear, and comparing that result to installation dates in my software, in system control [The App-settings in Windows 10 also work.]

If that does not lead you anywhere because you reinstalled the faulty software, or deleted the older logs, you can instead search your C:\ partition for "vcredist", or "vcredist_x86.exe" [the latter only if your problem stems from (86x)-32-bit software], delete the installation *.exes that you find one by one, and then when you find the one that stops the logs in C:\Windows\Temp from appearing, solve the issue in the software of the folder where the faulty vcredist.exe was located.

I have to apologise to Microsoft for my earlier message. Visual Studio is not responsible for the repeated installation of its software in my case. Though I still think their installers were the reason why the unpacked folders ended up in my non-OS-partition.

I keep getting two directories that show up and each directory has a .MDB, .XLS, .XLSX, .JPG, .TXT, .RTF, .DOC, .DOCX, .SQL amd a .PEM  file located in the directory.  None of the files will open with the applications matching the extensions. 

I keep deleting them and they reappearing.

Hi 

Hi everyone. The highlighted folders are unknown to me

Each time i delete them, they reappear with different folder name but with the same naming sequence (a letter, a meaningful word and then numbers. They dont look like folder for windows updates. I hope my network is not under attack by a ransom malware. 

Please help. Thank you.