Perpetual Folder Duplication

[John Denow]

Greetings...Another interesting development..

If this is not the correct heading to post under please let me know.

I have a "D" drive...6 GIG...that I load my Mp3's to as I download. I use WinAmp to play them. Right now I have about 6 folders that appear when I double click this drive..."Ad-Aware", "E-Cleaner", "My Music", "Program Files"(contains Audio Galaxy, WinAmp, & McAfee), "Wininst0.400", & "MyMoney backup"

One of the folders that puzzles me is "Wininst0.400"
When I click it, I get a second window with the exact same group of folders in it as what's in my "D" drive. Every time I click on this folder as the new window opens, I get the same thing until about the 20th time when I get a red "X"...file path too long to open. With my explorer address bar open, I can see the address go from "D:\" to "WININST0.400 " to "WININST0.400/WININST0.400" to WININST0.400/WININST0.400/WININST0.400/WININST0.400/..."
(WININST0.400 repeated about 20 times)
The "chain" keeps building with duplicate windows. This has caused me to have over 1200 Mp3's listed on that disk when doing a "find files/folders". The same group of 70 or so Mp3's are repeatedly listed..One group is under the folder "D:\My Music".
All the others are listed in the folders with an evergrowing "WININST0.400" string following it.

Does anyone have an idea as to what's going on? What did I do (if anything) to cause this perpetual duplicationand what can I do do get rid of these supposedly duplicate files. How do I know which to delete?? Can I simply delete the "WININST0.400" folder??

PS...I tried deleting the "WININST0.400" file and get another big red "X"....ERROR DELETING FILE.....cannot delete RECYCLED:access is denied...Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not in use.....

 

[Styxx]

Right-click this entry and choose Delete.

 

[John Denow]

Styxx...Please see my additional entry entered..."PS"......I tried this before seeing your post. Rejected for the listed reason.

 

[hlross72]

Delete them! WININST?.400 directories are the temporary directories used by Windows setup. If you start to install Windows and abort the process accidently ie. crash or poweroff you are always left with one of these directories, usually containing the Windows install files. You are also usually left with a setup.bat or some such in you root directory, this could be your problem. It runs every time you boot and adds another branch to the tree, delete it too.

 

[Styxx]

To git into SafeMode tap F8 once per second during a restart; Choose option number 3 with the arrow keys below the Delete key and strike Enter in the Windows Startup dialog box; click the Enter key when prompted with OK; find the file and right-click delete it. Restart via the Start button.

 

[John Denow]

I messed around a bit more after my post. Decided to try "Disk clean-up"...no go....tried "defrag"...told me I had errors and to run scan disk.

Ended up running "Scan Disk".....brought up the WinInst folder as a problem. I chose to delete it.

After restarting a few times, I do not see the file reappearing, so I won't worry about the "setup.bat" unless the problem recurrs.

Looks like things are fixed for now.

Thanks