random named folders appearing in my docs

[jjohnsoncantell]

Greetings,

 

Over the last few weeks ive been having reports from users of randomly named empty folders appearing in their my documents folders.

 

The folders are named with just random letters and numbers no more than 8 characters long. They are not as far as i can tell folders created by windows updates. They are much longer names.

 

At first i thought virus, however i have scanned the users pc and the storage box where the documents are redirected to and found nothing.

 

Clients run XPsp3 with latest updates.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

James

[jjohnsoncantell]

This now seems to be happening when microsoft word documents are accessed/saved.

 

Any ideas? Is this happening to anyone else?

 

Image attatched.

[Azhibberd]

Have you looked at those created them... And the time etc maybe help narrow it down for you!

[jjohnsoncantell]

ive actually watched it happen when a user saved a word document... however, the user didnt actualy create the folder

[Michael]

I've seen a similar glitch recently on two seperate Windows servers. If you click to highlight the folder, does the folder name change to something else?

[jjohnsoncantell]

No it doesnt. I have looked inside the folder and there is always another empty folder inside with a different random name.

 

However, i have just noticed in one of these folders is one called "offline" which contains 3 files. 0x00000001_R 0x00000001_R and HashFile.dat

[Dom_]

Which version of word are you using?

[Dom_]

Might be worth checking that your save as options are as in my picture (for 2003)

[jjohnsoncantell]

Hi Dom, we're using office 2003 sp3 at the moment. Have checked the options and they are identical to your screenshot.

[Azhibberd]

Silly normal comment but make sure you have all the updates on the word, Although not something i've ran into before although most of the site i work at is using open office now.

[jjohnsoncantell]

Yep have updated to most recent updates, our network has a wsus which pushes them out. Im scratching my head as to what is still causing word to create these folders as i havent made any changes to default settings.

[jack0w]

Was this ever resolved? As I now have the same problem!

[jjohnsoncantell]

hey jack0w...

 

No im afraid this wasnt resolved. Im still fighting this daily. Some users who havent check their documents folder have hundreds of these folders..

 

Im convinced its something to do with office and mandatory profiles as i dont get these in my documents and have my own user profile with different settings.

 

Glad someone else is seeing what i see.

 

Any ideas?

[jack0w]

Interesting that you're using mandatory profiles as well, maybe this has some bearing on it..

[jjohnsoncantell]

I was wondering if that was the case but i started with a completely new mandatory profile in the summer rebuild and im still getting the same problem...

 

Any suggestions? Im still banging my head against this one, one of my users has 300 folders theyve been holding onto thinking theyre important lol..

 

Im certain it is office but not sure what i can do about it.

[jack0w]

One thought that did occur....

 

If I change a users my documents to another location (which they do not have write access to) and map their my documents to a drive letter instead they could then use MS Office and wait for an access denied error.

 

As surely if Office tries to create a folder in My Documents without write access it would generate an access denied error. If this popped up after completing a specific action within Office it might give enough of a clue to avoid/resolve this problem.

[jjohnsoncantell]

that sounds like a good way to test.. but it all depends on whether or not office is being told to save temporary data into the users documents folder or not.. I say that because it creates the random folder when the program is started which suggests to me some sort of temp data storage or settings storage.

[jack0w]

Another trend I noticed is that people who heavily use Excel seem to have more random folders than others, is this something you've noticed too?

[jjohnsoncantell]

At the time it seemed to be mainly word causing it.. Ive tried to replicate the problem today with a the user account i know that had the problem but i cant get it to do it at all.. It does still happen though as there are loads on user areas with todays date on them.

[ricki]

Hi

 

I know this will be a long shot but is it the autosave option in word creating the folder and the files.

 

Richard

[ricki]

Have a look at tool and option and save

 

 

Have a see if something like make a local copy of files on network drive has been ticked of something has been set in here.

 

Richard

[paulk]

I have a similar problem, I got this problem after I removed a lot of generic settings from the user hive (I use mandatory profiles). As we set the profiles up with a test user to ensure correct operation the My Documents folder is directed to the wrong area which is not a good thing. I removed this setting and also a lot of other references to our test user. All I can think of is that I have removed some office settings as well I am going to test this out this morning and I will post another reply if it works.

[jjohnsoncantell]

ricki, have checked the save options and i havent got that option ticked. I also checked in the options where to create the autosave and it was directed to the user profile.

 

Paulk, That sounds like we are getting somewhere! Ive done exactly the same thing i think and its since then that its started. I recently removed some lingering traces of the account name i used to create the mandatory profile in the shell folders registry section. Im testing too to see if that made a difference.

 

Please let me know how your testing goes, im eager to see if its worked.

 

james

[jjohnsoncantell]

guys, an update to previous post...

 

i have found one of these folders with actual files in them, the text file it turns out had an excel header to it so i opened it up in excel and voila an excel spreadsheet appeared.. One of the _r files has a header that is the web address which matches our outlook web access server.

 

My guessing is its users opening word/excel files from inside an email as opposed to saving it and working on it that way. Not sure why it would create these files though.

 

Do you owa paulk?

 

James

[jjohnsoncantell]

Another update,

 

Can confirm i have forced the creation of a folder by opening a word document through outlook web access.

 

When viewing an email in outlook web access, i then open a word attatchment. This doesnt cause the creation of a folder, however closing internet explorer while the document is open in an explorer window does cause the creation of the folder in the users documents area.