Windows 10 Does corruption of OS is always/generally caused by Virus/Malware?

[Abhay Bhatt]

I always have a folder named 'Temp' at my desktop to keep files temporarily, which later I organise and shift at permanent places.
Since yesterday, I have noticed that its get deleted(like vanished!) automatically without my knowledge. It once got deleted, and I tried to recover the data through a recovery software 'EaseUS' but didn't find any of the files contained within that folder. It was strange that I could find files deleted many weeks/months earlier!
Ok, then, without any option and bewildered, I created the folder again, and start placing files in that. Now, again I found out that folder is missing.

I contacted Microsoft Support and a tech support person initiated a Remote session. He pasted some command on the 'Windows Powershell' and many red lines were returned. The command was like....app package..., etc. and the return statements were like....there is already a higher version of this app package, so could not.....etc.

He then told me that since the returned lines were red, it indicates that my OS is corrupted. He told that there are two options for me:-
One, I don't create a folder named 'Temp' again.
Second, I create a different account(profile) and transfer all my data to it.

I asked him why/how the windows got corrupted, so he said that it is because of virus/malware. When I asked how much sure he is, he said very sure.

But when I looked about Windows corruption on the Internet, I found out that there can be multitude of reasons why Windows can get corrupted. So, I am a little confused.

If anyone can increase my clarity on this, and provide me with any help/info regarding why the 'Temp' folder gets deleted all by itself, and/or how I can get my data back or solve this problem, I will really appreciate.

Thanks.

 

[kemical]

If anyone can increase my clarity on this, and provide me with any help/info regarding why the 'Temp' folder gets deleted all by itself,

Hi,
if you have a maintenance program running on a schedule such as Disk Clean or Ccleaner then it might be down to that depending on settings ect..

I asked him why/how the windows got corrupted

Windows can get corrupted from many things as you discovered but usually it's not down to one single thing. It's built up over time from various installs/uninstalls and crashes.

A good way to try fix any corruption within the system files is these two scans:

File scans
Right click on the Start menu icon and from the revealed list choose 'admin command prompt'. Type:
sfc /scannow
press enter and await results

In the same command prompt and after the above scan has finished type:
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Press enter and await results (longer this time).

If the first scan found files it could not repair but the second scan is successful, run the first scan again using the same command prompt box and this time it should repair the files found.

Sometimes however the corruption can be so bad that even the above scans don't help.

I always make sure that important files and folders are backed up away from the main system. If the machine goes down or you have to perform a clean install for whatever reason then it's not such a huge problem.