📎 AI Summary:
This thread discusses mysterious randomly named hexadecimal folders appearing on various drives across multiple Windows versions, with some containing empty SandBox folders in Windows 10. The original poster expresses frustration, noting some folders can't be deleted and questioning whether these are related to Windows Update, but clarifies all their systems are unaffected by malware. Contributors suggest possible causes, including Visual Studio installations and Windows Update, and recommend tools like SuperAntiSpyware's SuperDelete to remove the folders, indicating the issue might be benign but persistent.

cs1

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Nov 17, 2015
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Thread Author #1
So I have various desktops and all have more or less the same issue. In the root of each drive there are randomly named folders generated. Names like:

2b174a7b6cd269132e8dd780
52aebd6aec88ceb00badbc
32601669e81d70e5b9c7c8
ae888118d1365c5a165784ed221b20

So the only common thing seems to be that they are all hexadecimal, but even the lenght of the names are different.

There is a minor difference in Win10:

  1. For Win 7/8/8.1 the folders are empty.
  2. On Win 10 the folders contain a folder called SandBox which is empty.
The majority of the folders can be deleted without any issues, but some of them can't even with administrator rights.

I spent the last two days on google but couldn't solve this. I read that many of the people thinks that this is due to Windows Update. If that was true why my non-system partitions, external hard drives, usb pendrives are also affected?

I have to mention that all of my machines are affected regardless of their OS, location, user, etc. They run different anti-virus/anti-malware tools. None of them shows any sign of any infection.

What the heck is that?
 

MikeHawthorne

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May 25, 2009
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Hi

I used to get these folders all the time in Windows 8 but I haven't seen them in Windows 10.

I too thought that they were associated with Windows Update.

They did not appear on my C:\ drive but used to show up at the top of my D:\ drive.

If you use SuperAntiSpyware it has a SuperDelete file removal tool that might get rid of them.

Mike