Strange folder on Hard drive

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“##@acprjgojpwadlbioqjsjlqpotcwihuqtjpszxbhfmyfbuuscgbtrabptzadbzjhtbjtlazoalubtqkyifmyelemgtumxilxxqbapcmrmghrkmbopomlmdckniokgcbszkkxyfoojatsvttwgomorlnlyjotqqpyjmbyiqtvvfsicaayyaztnorzuybqomvuigvvjxvqdnzudmclkzsyipattkwbemoqevqsspwgsbkuwnpgnsfvrnhjwxyml”

That is one of 3 folders on my c drive.  It is empty as far as I can tell.  Just wondering what it could be as I’ve never seen a folder like this before.

Laptop is Acer AspireV15, 1 Tb, Windows 10 vs 1809.

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Have there been any recent updates or installation of other programs?

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The length of the folder name is 257 characters. I recall that Windows has a 256 character limit for a path and file name or a path and folder name. Do you have a cat which might have taken a nap on the keyboard?. Or perhaps a toddler who might have click on New Folder and then merrily started typing random characters on the keyboard?

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[PaulK]

Hmm. I measure the length as 255 when the enclosing quotation marks are excised.

Can you correlate the time stamps with any other activity?

Suggested handling: Create a folder (doesn’t even have to be in C: root) and Move these 3 folders into it. Folder name could be something like “Delete-In-December”, or whatever.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by PaulK.

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Yep, 255 characters without the quotes.

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SuzyQ, Everyone here has a GOOD suggestions. PaulK, has a nice one about correlating the timestamp with anything else happening that day/hour.

He also mentioned making a folder somewhere and cut/paste (drag) the folders to that drive. Great idea! I do the same for old antivirus data left behind years old that look to be “temporary” files or folders. If anything goes wrong. put them back.

Good ideas here. Very good ideas.

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[GoneToPlaid]

Are the other two folder names also 255 characters long? What are the creation dates for these three folders? Aside from “##@” which requires the Shift key to be pressed, all of the remaining characters are alphabet characters and no digits. Anyone in the family who might want to pull a prank? What are the other two folder names?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by GoneToPlaid. Reason: Ask another question

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Right-click the folder name and select “Scan with Windows Defender”.  If it’s malware, you’ll know, and know how to proceed.  Otherwise, delete the folders.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Thanks for getting back to me…just got a new laptop and have been installing all my stuff.  The 3 folders are on my older Acer laptop and all 3 have the 255 character names.  No toddlers, cats, and only my husband in the house, who is computer illiterate, no updates to my software or new software installs.  However, Windows Defender did an update and “Your Phone app had an update.  The drive in the Acer has 3 bad blocks and right now I’m running Checkdisk, hdtune to see if there are any more showing up…plan to buy an SSD  to replace it before it fails.

Ok, scans done, more bad blocks, but I just moved the 3 folders to another spot.  Creation date was 3 Aug 2019 which was the same day those updates I mentioned were done…but nothing else I can find.

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Your drive may also be failing. Copy everything important data to another drive now.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

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Had already run Win Defender, and no malware…I was just curious about where they could have come from!  But thanks everyone for your suggestions and help…I really love having this forum to ask questions.

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Did do a full backup with Macrium Reflect to my WD external drive, but I don’t have a new hard drive yet to clone to.  Any suggestions on either an SSD or mechanical HD to buy?  I’ll need a SATA to USB cable to accomplish that from my googling, I guess.

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Hi SuzyQ777,

I Googled “acer aspire v15 nitro teardown”, and I see that it is fairly easy to open up this laptop to replace its internal hard drive. Note that there appear to be two slightly different internal versions of this laptop model. In either case, it appears that the correct procedure for opening up this laptop is entirely from the underside of this laptop, instead of removing the keyboard plate and the keyboard.

I am not fond of the laptop’s 2.5″ hard drive which was manufactured by Western Digital.

If you want to replace the internal 1TB hard drive with a 1TB model which has a 5 year limited warranty, there appears to be only one option. See:

https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/hdd/barracuda/#specs-2-5

If you want to replace the internal 1TB hard drive with a 2TB hard drive, then you might consider cannibalizing the Seagate 2TB hard drive which is inside this specific external portable hard drive. See:

https://www.newegg.com/seagate-model-stdr2000102-2tb/p/N82E16822178437?Item=N82E16822178437

The portable 2.5″ hard drive model, shown in the above link, features a case which is easy to open such that the internal hard drive can be removed and used as a replacement laptop hard drive. This internal hard drive will fit in your laptop. The caveat is that this hard drive only has a 2 year limited warranty. Yet I have been using this hard drive in one of my laptops for 5 years now. The key is to make sure that when you install this hard drive in you laptop, that it is stably installed such that it does not experience excessive vibration. This wasn’t an issue for my Acer laptop since it featured a really good mounting bracket.

On the other hand, your laptop uses foam padding in order to hold the installed hard drive. This foam padding, by itself, might not be entirely sufficient. You might have to cut and install some thin cardboard or plastic shims, which fit along the sides of the hard drive, for a really stable and vibration-free installation. If you do that, and in order to prevent vibration, the cannibalized 2TB hard drive should easily last for 5 years, if you configure it in Windows to power down after 15 minutes of inactivity, since this hard drive is rated for at least 600 thousand drive head load/unload cycles.

Have a look at the attached Speccy report for one of these cannibalized 2TB Seagate hard drives which I have been using in my Acer laptop for 4 years. As you will see, this hard drive is well beyond its rated 600 thousand drive head load/unload cycles. It still shows zero pending sectors to be reallocated, and zero sectors which have been reallocated. The key thing for all hard drives is to make sure that they are mounted in a very stable fashion such that they do not experience excessive vibration. This is especially true for the latest helium filled large capacity hard drives which allow the drive heads to float much closer to the hard drive platters.

Best regards,

–GTP

 

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anonymous wrote:

Have there been any recent updates or installation of other programs?

A great suggestion, and how I normally find the source of ‘mystery’ files on my computers.

Install and use the free Agent Ransack, available here:
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack

It’s far, far easier to use than Windows Search for this type of search (and for most non-indexed file searches, I find!). You can do separate searches on (last) Modified and Created Dates, including entering a time range.

The only caveat with Agent Ransack is that last time I checked, if I remember correctly, the ‘After’ and ‘Before’ searches are not quite what they say… whether After is actually ‘On/After’, or Before’ is actually ‘On/Before’, I forget which. (This only makes a difference when you’re doing a *very* specific date search, but of course it’s much better to search for files Created/Modified from say 10 minutes before the mystery file date to 10 minutes after the mystery file date.

Don’t try to search on (Last) Created & Modified dates at the same time!

There’s a similar issue to the above caveat re searching on a specific tight file size range (say, files bigger than 2KB but less than 4KB), which you can easily experiment with if and when needed.

Agent Ransack is one of the most useful pieces of freeware I’ve ever used, and I’ve been using it for years. I liked it so much that I recently sprung for the pay version, FileLocator Pro, which does indexing and in my experience is far more reliable than Windows 10’s own indexing facility (i.e. it doesn’t break and take hours of googling to find a fix, if one is available at all). But indexing is basically only an issue for people with hundreds or thousands of documents (I have literally ens of thousands of .mht webpage archives, and more).

Asus N53SM & N53SN 64-bit laptops (Win7 Pro & Win10 Pro 64-bit multiboots), venerable HP Pavilion t760 32-bit desktop (XP & Win7 Pro multiboot), Oracle VirtualBox VM's: XP & Win7 32-bit, XP Mode, aged Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 2019s (8" & 10.1"), Blu-ray burners, digital cameras, ext. HDDs (latest 5TB!), AnyDVD, Easeus ToDo Backup Home, Waterfox, more. Me: Aussie card-carrying Windows geek.

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SuzyQ777 wrote:

Did do a full backup with Macrium Reflect to my WD external drive, but I don’t have a new hard drive yet to clone to.  Any suggestions on either an SSD or mechanical HD to buy?  I’ll need a SATA to USB cable to accomplish that from my googling, I guess.

Restoring from the external disk is just as easy as cloning internally. Save the requirement for extra cables.

Almost any SSD that is big enough will do, but I usually plumb for ones with a reputation for speed and reliability – meaning big name brands.
This Tom’s Hardware guide may help.

cheers, Paul

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