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I have an external Hard Drive and from time to time a random folder named something like 2eca741dd6d1f17e12bd34da6e546f appears. I delete it and some days/weeks later it appears again.

The folder contains a file named MpMiniSigStub.exe

What is it?

When I try to delete it, I have to delete it as an administrator. Also, the name isn't the same every time.

An Dorfer
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Shevliaskovic
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    It's (most likely) left-over Windows Update folders. they come back each time you do Windows Updates. They also use the drive with the most free space, which is probably your external drive. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Dec 24 '13 at 17:24
  • So, it's not anything malicious? – Shevliaskovic Dec 24 '13 at 17:25
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    If you disconnect the external when you do updates, they won't show up. Nothing to worry about. mpministigstub is an MS file. – Raystafarian Dec 24 '13 at 17:26
  • possible duplicate of [Windows Updates Folders (With Strange Names) in C drive](http://superuser.com/questions/130125/windows-updates-folders-with-strange-names-in-c-drive), [Random directories in c:\ that I cannot delete](http://superuser.com/questions/132176/random-directories-in-c-that-i-cannot-delete), [What are these folders created on my Western Digital 2TB Mirror?](http://superuser.com/questions/382305/what-are-these-folders-created-on-my-western-digital-2tb-mirror) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Dec 24 '13 at 17:27
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    `MpMiniSigStub.exe` specifically is for the automatic updates of Windows Antimalware Signatures used by MSE or Windows Defender. –  Dec 24 '13 at 21:30

1 Answers1

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Windows updates creates folders with these kinds of names and does so on the volume with the largest percentage of space available.

So if you have a computer with two drives:
1) Internal HDD, say 80GiB, 40GiB full (50%)
2) and an external drive, say 10GiB with 2GiB filled ( 20% full ),
Then it will create these folders on the external drive.

Hennes
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