[Resolved] Deleting automatic Windows folders

A program I believe to be my Windows 98 operating system keeps putting a folder called "My Download Files" onto my C drive. Each day when I boot up it appears and each day I delete it, only to have it reappear the next day. I've looked all over my computer trying to figure out which part of the OS is creating is so I can tell it to stop or redirect it to another folder (which I've been able to do for other programs). I've also looked at other programs that could be the culprit (e.g., RealOne Player) to see if they're the problem. However, a friend told me that directions within the Windows template create this folder. (Of course, I've never heard of a Windows template, so I don't know how reliable this information is.)

Anyone know how to get rid of this annoyance?

Thanks.

P.S. This type of thing is one of my main gripes against Windows. Its creates all these "helpful" folders and settings, which for me are never helpful. Therefore, I have to spend loads of my time figuring out how to delete them or change things back to the way I want them.

 

Hi kmanies and welcome to TSG.

I vaguely recall seeing something like that on my Win98 system, deleting it and not having it come back.

I'm assuming you've opened this folder and never found anything in it?

Does it re-appear immediately after a reboot, or do you have to be online first?

There may be a registry entry placing it there, whether it would be worthwhile to go hunting for it, I don't know.

But it won't hurt to have a look at your normal startups. To show those, get the StartupList application from the site below, unzip and run it, then copy/paste the results to a reply here.

http://www.lurkhere.com/~nicefiles/

There is much ado about the issue here, and a lot of folks seem to think it is put there by download managers, such as "RealDownload"


http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q="my+download+files"+folder&sa=N&tab=wg

 

Methinks that the "Links" folder in the favorites menu on IE behaves in a similar way.

 

The weird thing is I've been using Win98 for a while and think that initially it did disappear when I deleted this folder and only recently has it started making its continual appearance. To answer some of your questions:

*There's never anything in the folder.
*The folder appears immediately when when I boot up, but its a work computer, so I'm always online.
*My start ups are in the attached file.

Thanks for your help.

-kmanies

 

I see two things in your startups which could be associated with it, they may have come together. One is Netscape, which has a "Smart Download" feature which creates that folder; the other is Netzip's Download Demon.

A netzip install either present or past, is indicated by this entry under Browser Helper Objects:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\NZDD.DLL

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...oad+files"+netscape+netzip&btnG=Google+Search

 

Thanks for the advice. I have Netscape 7.0 on my computer, which uses something called Download Manager (vs Smart Download). Since it seems to ask me each time I download something where I want to put it I'm thinking that Netscape is less likely to be the culprit.

I don't have RealDownload (from Netzip) loaded on my computer now, but it looks like I did at one time. I went into Add/Remove programs and it still has the program listed there, even though it can't delete it because it can no longer find the files. I tried deleting the file nzdd.dll (taking a chance), but Windows won't let me delete it (its being used by Windows). Will deleting it help? If so, would I be able to delete it if I started up in safe mode?

Thanks,

kmanies

 

I suspect the netzip dll may be used by Netscape's Smart Download; from what I've seen it does create that folder.

Instead of trying to delete it, I'd use BHODemon to disable it. It can always be re-enabled if that causes more problems.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads/bhod/

Another thing you can try is to run regedit and click Edit>Find. Enter: my download files in the Find field and hit Find Next. f3 will continue the search.

Entries associated with "mru" keys will not be suspect, but just represent any previous searches on the drive. Other hits would be. I'm not going to suggest automatically deleting it without knowing what installed and uses it, but you can save the key with which it is associated by clicking Registry > Export. It can be restored by double clicking the .reg file that gets saved. You can also restart in MS-DOS mode and enter: scanreg /restore

 

It's fixed! First, I used BHODemon to disable the .dll file. That seemed to fix the problem (no folders were created during two boot ups).

But, I was still curious so I also did the search in my registry. I found something associated with Real Download v4.0 in there that was associated with the folder. Instead of deleting the entry I modified the path name from C:\My Download Files to just the C directory. Just in case.

Thanks so much for the help and for pointing me to all these tools to help me manage my computer. Its very appreciated.

-kmanies

 

Excellent! And you are certainly welcome for the help.