Something keeps creating an unwanted folder in My Docs

Try3 · 05 Feb 2022

ziffel,

Many annoying applications used to create their own subfolder within your Documents folder. This practice is not so common nowadays.
So this problem might simply boil down to a quest to identify the particular annoying application responsible for this one.

You might get a clue by noting the creation & modified dates of the folder in question then comparing them to the installed date of applications in

Control panel,
[View by - Large/Small icons],
Programs & features.

Clicking on the Installed on column header to sort them into that order would probably be useful.

Best of luck,
Denis

ziffel · 05 Feb 2022

I found the culprit

I had removed the folder yesterday afternoon, and noticed that it was back this morning. The folder was created at 8:31PM last night, and I thought back to what I was doing at that time. I remembered I was playing a solitaire game on Steam.

I deleted the folder again, and launched Steam - then the same game, and sure enough, I see the _UNZIP folder appear as I launched the game. Repeated this again, same result.

The game is Jewel Match Atlantis Solitaire if anyone's curious. The folder creation might be a bug with the game, as it never puts anything in the folder (i tracked with the above mentioned Nirsoft Filewatch app).

@Bastet, running Malwarebytes is always a good advice, thanks.

thanks to all for the help

AndreTen · 05 Feb 2022

glad you've found it. And thanks for posting back

Bastet · 05 Feb 2022

Glad that you found the cause.

pokeefe0001 · 09 Feb 2022

Obviously not applicable in this case, but I've found another cause for this problem.

I used to have a folder for downloaded files and my browser - FireFox - still associates that old folder with some web sites. If I download something from those sites FF will recreate the folder ... even if I change the download destination to some other folder. I'm sure there's a way to get FF to forget the old folder but I haven't bothered to chase it down.