Strange installs on my D Drive

mindrot · 19 Aug 2008 at 21:06

I did an update last night for XP64 and found this directory on my D drive (not the OS drive which is C): d492820e3558aa905d478b91dc

Also for some reason I now have a Program Files directory on the D Drive as well. It looks like this: D:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DW

It has 9 subfolders in it (each folder's name is made up of four digits). There's also a DW20.EXE, DWDCW20.DLL and DWTRIG20.EXE in the maind DW directory. I'm guessing this all has something to do with Dr. Watson?

Are thses all safe to delete, and why are they there? :confused:

Thanks.

PMWD · 19 Aug 2008 at 21:31

The first one sounds like a bit of leftover from a Windows update, I've had those drop onto my second partition before.

Not sure about the other lot.

bledd · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:26

the random letter & number folder is not uncommon, it's just a temp folder and safe to delete..

that DW thing is either for error reporting or .net framework.. i'd just leave it there tbh

IAmATeaf · 20 Aug 2008 at 13:09

The DW files are to do with the Error Reporting feature, also known as Dr Watson from days of old

No idea why they are on your D: drive though, have you moved Programs Files onto the D: drive?

mindrot · 20 Aug 2008 at 18:28

IAmATeaf said:
The DW files are to do with the Error Reporting feature, also known as Dr Watson from days of old No idea why they are on your D: drive though, have you moved Programs Files onto the D: drive?

Nope: Program Files and Program Files (x86) are both on the C Drive...

mindrot · 23 Aug 2008 at 22:09

Do you think the Dr Watson is safe to delete? Though I'd prefer to uninstall it if possible, though I'm not to sure how to go about that... any ideas?

Thanks

IAmATeaf · 23 Aug 2008 at 22:33

Have you checked to see if the same files exists on the C: drive?

mindrot · 23 Aug 2008 at 22:49

Thanks for that - just did

. They do exist there with the exception of 8 of the subfolders.

mindrot · 8 Sep 2008 at 22:24

Do you think it would be safe to move these files to the program files directory on the C drive?

IAmATeaf · 9 Sep 2008 at 16:46

Those folders with the 4 digits are language variants of DLL(s) used by DW, I'm sure it would be safe to move them across and delete the DW folder on the D: drive but the real question is how did they get there in the first place. Have you searched through your registry for occurrences of say the DLL and see what location Windows thinks it should be accessing it from?

mindrot · 9 Sep 2008 at 17:55

Thanks for the response IAmATeaf.

I've never really gotten into mucking about with the registry, so I wouldn't really know where to begin.