Where Do These Temp Files Come From?

vanp said:

Location: C>Windows>Temp

I recently started seeing folders with names like tw-15c0-518-ac7fd8e in the above location. Apparently all the folders are empty. First there were a few dozen, and I deleted them 2 or 3 times (once per week). This time there were about 200. Looking at Properties doesn't give me any indication where they come from. Deleting them doesn't seem to hurt. Any idea of their source or if there's anything I can do to prevent their creation?

Thanks.

They are just temporary System files, and will get cleaned up naturally by the system when it is safe to do so. I would not mess with them. You may delete something needed and cause damage to your OS. Just let them be. You cannot prevent them from being created. The system periodically runs maintenance to clean up.

It is a protected system folder, so you must have seen a warning when you went in there that you did not have permission to the folder.

vanp said:

Location: C>Windows>Temp
I recently started seeing folders with names like tw-15c0-518-ac7fd8e in the above location....

Hi,

There is a task, in Task Scheduler => Microsoft\Windows\Management\Provisioning => Logon, which creates those folders, a few minutes later of any user logon.
Disabling this task, issue does not exist any more and of course, if you don't disable it, you may safely delete those folders every time you see them. Also, System deletes those empty folders, periodically.

Actually, you can safely delete any file/folder you see in Windows/Temp folder, if System allows that.

Finally, what @f14tomcat suggests is the safest way to face it.

vanp said:

Actually, no. I know the warning you're talking about. I deleted those with other stuff in the Temp folder and don't remember any specific permission being requested...

The C:\Windows\Temp folder itself is protected by default. You would have been told you don't have permission the first time you tried to open it. Of course, if you then clicked Continue you would never see the warning again as you would have granted yourself permanent permission.



On my machine there are a large number of (mostly) empty folders in C:\Windows\Temp. The few files found there are almost all *.log text files, some for recent language pack updates, some for Defender signature updates. One folder contained two .dll files, these seem to be for the Malware Protection Engine (Defender).