Windows 7 What is the US1 Folder in Windows 7 and Can I Delete It?

[Irwinventions]

Hi,
new here, first post and I'm baffled about something. Running Windows 7 Professional, and I've noticed a folder in Windows titled: US1. It has a subfolder called autoshoot that is huge. It has a tremendous amount of files all listing date marks, such as this: EB-26.11.2012.

I don't do any online games or anything like that. The usual casual searching/email/facebook kind of thing.

Further, I've run a full MS Security Essentials just to see if I've been malwared.

Does anybody know what this US1 is, and do I really need it?

Thanks

 

[Mike]

There are numerous posts like this all over the Internet. It's not normally part of Windows 7 and you probably don't need it. It may be part of some software installed by your PC manufacturer, but generally speaking, as far as program design goes, they should not be putting stuff in the Windows directory/folder. It is probably safe to delete, with some caution.

I note that there is no reference to this anywhere on the Internet other than people wondering what it is - perhaps only you. I would suggest removing it if it is taking up a large amount of space. It would be interesting to see what is actually in those files.

 

[Irwinventions]

There are numerous posts like this all over the Internet. It's not normally part of Windows 7 and you probably don't need it. It may be part of some software installed by your PC manufacturer, but generally speaking, as far as program design goes, they should not be putting stuff in the Windows directory/folder. It is probably safe to delete, with some caution.

I note that there is no reference to this anywhere on the Internet other than people wondering what it is - perhaps only you. I would suggest removing it if it is taking up a large amount of space. It would be interesting to see what is actually in those files.

Thanks for your reply, Mike. After seeing little initial response to this, and after more failed attempts to find further info on the net at large, I decided to take a chance on removing just a few of the files to see what would happen. Worse case scenario is that I'd irreparably crash windows and have to do a reinstall. (Not like it would be the first time

Experimenting very cautiously at first, one file at a time, I saw no ill effect whatsoever, verifying by running various windows-specific programs, word, excel, etc. and further moving/opening/creating/modifying general folders. Following this, I deleted all but the most current "autoshoot" file, and not only did I still not see any noticeable harm, but also regained 22G of drive space!

All's well that ends well, I guess, except that I'm still so very curious about what on earth it is, where does it come from, (it refreshes several times a day!) and what it's supposed to do, especially since removing it seems to cause no harm. I guess I just accept it as an oddball anomaly and dump it all together. This brings me to another query, which I'm not sure I'm skilled enough enact. If I delete the main US1 folder, and then it does automatically reinstall itself, is there some sort of command prompt I can create to prevent it from reinstalling?

Thanks again for your reply.

 

[Mike]

At the end of the day, you want to find out what is generating these files. Try opening one of the files in Notepad and see if it is a binary file. You will know its binary if it appears in gibberish. If there is actual text, now you have a basis to figure out what it is. You can also use procmanager to find out what is writing to this folder. This is a bit on the advanced side of things. I would look into what is contained in the files. It is remotely possible you have spyware or malware on your system generating these large files. You should look at programs that could be writing these files endlessly to disk. For all we know without further information, it could be a keylogger.