what is C:\9b998ba5b8f8a9a3cba9dcab?

Question

Okay, so my mom's computer is going super slow, and being pretty good with computers (relatively, anyways) she's asked me to fix it.. I've gone through the basics, Male-ware bytes, got Unhide and Rkill on, running those now, but I her BFs son downloaded alot of crap (emulators and ROMs mostly) so I'm going through the Program Files to clear all of this out, and I noticed at the very top is a File that simply says 9b998ba5b8f8a9a3cba9dcab. Inside the folder there are two things, mrt,exe,_p and mrtstub. The first one is a _P file, the second an application, niether of which can be opened.. So, my question is this: How can I tell if this is importnat, or if I should delete it? (also note-worthy, this is a windows 8 laptop, running on Shell to give it a more Win-7 feel, and its a....HP 2000 Notebook, if this sticker is to be trusted)

Answer 1

These are temporary files created by Microsoft during installing some important updates. They can be deleted after the installation is complete. However, very often they can't be deleted or appear again after deletion. In that case, you must start your computer in Safe mode and then delete the files and reboot normally.

Answer 2

mrt.exe=Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool

Not sure about mrtstub(Probably a Windows 8 application, different in older versions of windows)



Right click on each file and click "properties" That will show you what they are and who makes them plus other info



MRT has/can been accessed in Windows through the "search" function. simply type mrt and then "enter"

Again Windows 8 may be a bit different



NOTE: Try the CHameleon feature in Malwarebytes, access through all programs>>Malwarebytes>>

Tools>>Chameleon

Designed to do the same thing as Rkill

Answer 3

That's nothing. You probably have a 500GB hard drive, that's mostly empty. (right click on C drive to check it)

Also check Downloads folder in _Users.

My guess is, something's causing abnormal memory and/or cpu usage. Check Task Manager.

Answer 4

Looks like a temp directory that should be automatically deleted. Sometimes they get interrupted and can't delete it. Therefore, deleting it would be fine. Don't think it will make the computer faster though

Answer 5

Looks like a temporary folder. You can delete it or them if there are several. One thing you can do is go to computer, right-click on the drive, then select DISK CLEANUP.