Mysterious blank folder keeps showing up on my desktop

windows windows-8 windows-8.1 windows-explorer

30,622

Solution 1

According to this discussion, this issue seems to be related to remnants of an old Microsoft Office 2010 installation.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/256250-random-empty-folder-keeps-appearing-desktop.html

The fix suggests searching the registry for 138508BC-1E03-49EA-9C8F-EA9E1D05D65D and removing occurrences.

Solution 2

Going to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\

and removing these keys:

138508BC-1E03-49EA-9C8F-EA9E1D05D65D

0875DCB6-C686-4243-9432-ADCCF0B9F2D7

appears to have taken care of this bizarre problem.

30,622

Mike Christensen

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Mike Christensen almost 2 years
I have a folder with no name on my Windows desktop. The name is literally empty:

I'd like to get rid of this. Oh, easy you say? Well here's where things get interesting. First, if I click on it and hit Delete, it just comes back within a day, like a zombie coming back from the dead.

Okay, great maybe I can hide it or something. Well, if I try to right click on it to modify the folder properties, it becomes clear this isn't actually a real file:

If I select "Create shortcut", nothing happens. If I double click on it to try to open it, nothing happens. What does the actual file system look like, you ask? Nothing:

Any ideas on how to kill this thing once and for all?

Update:

Contents of desktop.ini:
```
[LocalizedFileNames]
migwiz.lnk=@%windir%\system32\migwiz\wet.dll,-588
```
Contents of Public folder desktop.ini:
```
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21799
```
Another Update:

I can Cut the folder and paste it somewhere else on the desktop. If I paste the folder to some other folder on my disk, I get this helpful error:
- Julian Knight about 9 years
  
  If you have a look inside desktop.ini you may see the definition of the "folder". This happens after a restart? Or even if you leave the system running?
- Steven about 9 years
  
  Try dir /ah C:\Users\Public\Desktop
- Mike Christensen about 9 years
  
  @Steven - Same thing. Just one desktop.ini hidden file (no normal files)
- Mike Christensen about 9 years
  
  @JulianKnight - Added the contents of both desktop.ini files to the post.
- JosefZ about 9 years
  
  Try dir /a against both user and public desktop folders
- Mike Christensen about 9 years
  
  @Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 - If I paste the folder somewhere else, I get an error (See updated screen shot above)
- Julian Knight about 9 years
  
  I don't believe it is a real folder but rather a Windows Explorer indirection that has gone wrong. Clearly something is recreating it. Have you checked for malware? Anything odd running?
- Mike Christensen about 9 years
  
  @JulianKnight - We use Trend Micro here for viruses, and it says everything is okay.
- Yorik about 9 years
  
  It looks like it might be an OS search/Office-related product ({138508bc-1e03-49ea-9c8f-ea9e1d05d65d}), possibly a conflict with office 2010 and 2013 (?)
- Julian Knight about 9 years
  
  I don't like to be a naysayer but ... no AV is perfect. You should check manually for odd things running and maybe run some anti-malware checks too.
Yorik about 9 years

see also: social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/lync/en-US/…
Julian Knight about 9 years

Good catch, +1 from me
Mike Christensen about 9 years

Cool, removed a bunch of those keys from the registry. Gonna reboot just to be safe. If it doesn't come back tomorrow, I'll mark this as answered. Thanks!
Mike Christensen about 9 years

Welp, it stayed dead. Yay!
Thalys over 7 years

Would be nice if what these keys did were documented somewhere. Removing keys with arbitrary/cryptic GUIDs seems scary.