📎 AI Summary:
The thread discusses mysterious, empty folders with long hex names found in the AppData directory, which users are unsure about and consider removing. The original poster suspects they might be related to Norton Security or Windows Home vs. Pro versions, but no definitive answer is provided. Other contributors suggest these folders are unusual, and one recommends using "procmon" to investigate their creation process, though its purpose is not explained further. Overall, the discussion centers on identifying the folders' origin and whether they pose a concern.

PaulSp

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2019
Messages
39
Thread Author #1
Does anyone know what those folders whose names are long sequences of hex numbers enclosed with brackets are used for? I have hundreds of them in my AppData directory and a hankering desire to remove them all! None of them appear to have any files in them.
 

Solution
Yeah that's not normal. You could run procmon to see what is creating them. You're right I don't know what you're referring to because that isn't normal Windows behavior

Neemobeer

Windows Forum Team
Staff member
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
8,995
Directly under appdata or in a subdirectory? Can you open one and post the contents?
 

PaulSp

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2019
Messages
39
Thread Author #3
I'm surprised you don't know what I'm talking about. Under AppData/local are hundreds of folders named similarly to this:
"{00BAC13D-0F69-4EDA-B23D-CB883CE38BBF}". And that's just it, each folder is apparently empty.
 

Last edited:

nmsuk

Essential Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2009
Messages
4,328
This is mine
An image from 'Weird folders under AppData'. Screenshot of a Windows File Explorer showing various folders in C:\Users\Nemesis\AppData\Local directory.

And no folders like that.
 

Last edited by a moderator:

PaulSp

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2019
Messages
39
Thread Author #5
Attached is the beginning of mine. You have to scroll through pages of these to get to readable folders like yours.
An image from 'Weird folders under AppData'. Screenshot of a Windows File Explorer window showing many randomly named folders in AppData\Local.
 

Last edited by a moderator:

PaulSp

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2019
Messages
39
Thread Author #6
I just checked my laptop which is running Win10 Pro and these folders are not present there. The only differences between the two that come to mind:

1 - My desktop is running Win10 Home
and
2 - I am not using Norton Security on my laptop. I decided to go with the built-in Windows security, instead, when I upgraded back in July.

Could these be Norton folders? Used for what? Anybody out there using Norton Security that could check their systems?
 

Neemobeer

Windows Forum Team
Staff member
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
8,995
Yeah that's not normal. You could run procmon to see what is creating them. You're right I don't know what you're referring to because that isn't normal Windows behavior
 

Solution

Neemobeer

Windows Forum Team
Staff member
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
8,995
Something like that could be normal if they were created in a temp directory but not into the root of an appdata directory (local,locallow, and roaming)
 

PaulSp

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2019
Messages
39
Thread Author #11
These entries are apparently coming from Windows Live Mail when starts. This is anecdotal.