Huge protect folder

[Guest]

Hi, In trying to diagnose why my virus scan takes so long, I discovered that
I have a folder
documents and settings/user account/application data/microsoft/protect
that contains 1.1 million files! It takes over an hour just to list the
contents in Windows Explorer.
Anybody know what these files are for and can I delete them?
Thanks
Jan in Vancouver
Excuse me if this was a double post but my previous attempt at posting
dissappeared when I logged in.

 

[Tom Willett]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_protection_application_programming_interface


| Hi, In trying to diagnose why my virus scan takes so long, I discovered
that
| I have a folder
| documents and settings/user account/application data/microsoft/protect
| that contains 1.1 million files! It takes over an hour just to list the
| contents in Windows Explorer.
| Anybody know what these files are for and can I delete them?
| Thanks
| Jan in Vancouver
| Excuse me if this was a double post but my previous attempt at posting
| dissappeared when I logged in.

 

[Jon Scott]

Hi, In trying to diagnose why my virus scan takes so long, I discovered
that
I have a folder documents and settings/user account/application
data/microsoft/protect
that contains 1.1 million files! It takes over an hour just to list the
contents in Windows Explorer.
Anybody know what these files are for and can I delete them?

A little googling:
http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?s=e5191fb1361a4d6c6eeab5b220098fd4&t=710192
http://www.spywareguide.com/product_show.php?id=2372

Jon.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for this info. I checked when the folder containing the
million files was created, and it was the week that the virus you pointed to
was discovered.
I have now deleted the whole thing. Windows Explorer couldn't do it as my
machine kept crashing, so I used CCleaner. It took over 5 hours to delete
(I'm not sure how long exactly as I had to go to work after the first 5
hours) but it is now gone.
It also solved a related problem as lsass.exe would thrash my hard drive for
3 hours every time I booted up, and that does not happen any more, and now a
virus scan only takes about 20 minutes.
Thank you again
Jan in Vancouver