Wondering what those strange folders on the C: drive are about?

You may have seen them; they have names like 75ed976fhr5429t5m2 or other largely-numeric gibberish. They usually have folders inside them with names like "i386" and "amd", or a long list of numeric names. And they share one annoying characteristic: You can't delete them.

Where did they come from? Microsoft. They were the temporary folders created to hold files that were being installed as part of a Windows Automatic Update. (The "Microsoft .NET" packages are particularly infamous for this, but others can do it as well, I've found.) Once the relevant updates have been applied, and the system has been restarted, those folders are entirely useless; they are supposed to be deleted automatically - but sometimes they aren't. And when you try to delete the folders manually, you get an error message telling you that you aren't allowed to delete the first file in the list inside. The same goes for the rest of the files.

So how can you get rid of them?

Here's the slickest and easiest fix I've found.

1. If your system has multiple user accounts, log in as the Adminstrator (or a user that has the same privileges). If you don't know what I'm talking about here, then you can skip directly to the next step.

2. Right-click on the folder that needs to be deleted. Select "Sharing" from the menu. Click on the boxes for "Share this on the network" and "Allow others to change my files" to place check marks in both of them. Apply the changes.

You can now delete the entire folder. (It will complain that somebody else might be using the files, but obviously this is not a warning that you need to worry about in this instance.)

I've seen other, much more cumbersome solutions, but this is the easiest one to use in most cases.