1

I recently installed a copy of Windows 8 on my machine and about a week ago, I noticed strange files on my hard drive

This file is currently located within my C:\ volume:

{6EAD1E43-D7C1-41E9-89F0-8FD2F5B1B332}

No extension, just a weird serial number as the filename. Any suggestions as to what this may be?

EDIT:

File size is 1.70KB

Contents:

òì³÷×c®M´“"Ïv?Âpi
x©Ê™`¼‡!Š\+Y9Ú³ñJ@»ú‘iùóe„DàfJtEûO,)8,²íïi¿þò×÷Uä/7+Ëd(VÉ„üͳ
«#I -¹4¹^dìœ%$ÿkGš'%‹Q>õô®“ÌôÉ_ÏTïaQ‰ÎBéˆh“€A«pVXÛ’©½ÑÆCx†ÞDœ—ÂÔ³,Ý (¾âá
Vs"d–ïÿ†}Iµ<¦˜¹Ïšô‹I(Ö¸þ©†ÝB‘Z;vÒ䈈­–®*r%€ö~gÎWƤÿ&“øËy“Äû~{…\´˜>.„Tà_©:Íp2Áór‚ò yë&c’óM•Ux9Åã#Ž†‡¬âY

I'm no expert but this seems like some sort of encrypted binary code. I'm tempted to wipe my PC. I'm running windows 8 on an old Lenovo T410 if that helps.

Here is a screenshot if it is still unclear

enter image description here

Improve this question
5
  • Just to clarify, it's a file and not a Folder? What's the size reported for the file? If you open it (in Notepad), is there anything in it?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Oct 30, 2013 at 19:10
  • @techie007 - see edits, I'm not sure what this is, it's kind of scaring me.. should I wipe my HD?
    – dcd0181
    Oct 30, 2013 at 19:15
  • 2
    No, don't wipe your drive yet (unless you want to). usually when we see these as folders, they are windows update temp files or uninstallation/recovery files for service packs or whatnot. in your case this file does appear to contain encoded data, but is not executable so it can't hurt you by itself. it may be a resource used by a peice of malware, but there is no indication that that is the case from what you have told us. check you windows update history. did it install any updates at about the time that file was created?
    – Frank Thomas
    Oct 30, 2013 at 19:19
  • Relax, a virus isn't going to be THAT obvious ;) and generally the only thing that can write to the root of C: is Windows itself. How many of these files exist? Have you checked who is the "owner" of the file? If you delete them do they come back? My gues sis that it's just a temporary file that Windows was using and it just didn't get cleaned up properly. Delete it an move on. ;)
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Oct 30, 2013 at 19:22
  • Sorry about the delayed response, I deleted them, then ran windows update. Afterwards they appeared again, so no worries on my part. Thanks for the suggestions
    – dcd0181
    Nov 2, 2013 at 20:05

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

That file you see is named using Globally Unique Identifier (GUID). These are the hex strings grouped and separated by hyphens and typically used to note something as unique. It's made to make it practically impossible for any two to ever be identical across the computers. I know that some programs left such files after installation, but I cannot tell you where they coming from nor whether they can be deleted safely. Usually these are hidden and it is not rare that they have the System File attribute.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .