Over the last decade I was wondering if I did something wrong or my computer was infected by some rootkit that some random installation files shows up in the root folder.
Turns out it’s a stupid bug (didn’t expect something this low from Microsoft) that it unpacks temporary files of Visual C++ 2008 redistributables to whatever’s that’s largest storage space’s ROOT folder!
It’s fixed in SP1, but some old programs distributing the first revision will crap all over the root folder of seemingly random drives (actually, it’s the one with the most free space). Nasty!
I made a batch file to clean it up. It’s not robust or up to any good programming standards (should have checked the hash signature before deleting if I was paid to write that, but I wasn’t). This batch file accepts an input like where the drive letter was littered (like E:\), or without input arguments, it will just pick the root folder of the current location.
@ECHO OFF echo.Clean up Visual C++ 2008 temporary files (due to a bug) set "old_dir=%cd%" if "%~1" == "" goto Main cd /d %1 :Main REM must be a root folder of some drive cd / REM Display current drive echo.%cd:~0,1% drive is going to be cleaned. Press Ctrl+C now to abort now or any other key to continue. pause del install.exe del install.res.1028.dll del install.res.1031.dll del install.res.1033.dll del install.res.1036.dll del install.res.1040.dll del install.res.1041.dll del install.res.1042.dll del install.res.2052.dll del install.res.3082.dll del vcredist.bmp del globdata.ini del install.ini del eula.1028.txt del eula.1031.txt del eula.1033.txt del eula.1036.txt del eula.1040.txt del eula.1041.txt del eula.1042.txt del eula.2052.txt del eula.3082.txt del VC_RED.MSI del VC_RED.cab echo.Done cd /d %old_dir%
No warranty or support of any sort if you use it. That’s why I wouldn’t even make it downloadable. Just copy and paste it to a batch file yourself, and keep in mind that you are on your own.
