[odessabo]

first off, make sure you have administrator rights on the machine.

secondly, you should be able to take ownership of the folders in the permissions properties.

the only other time that I've seen this is when a worm has infected a machine and created some folders itself. then who knows...

[qt 3.14159]

Just a thought...

When you run Service Pack 1 it creates a file that is made up of random numbers and letters and then it deletes it at the end of the installation. Did you have a service pack installation go bad at some point?

[Whisper9999]

Interesting. I didn't do the install of that. But that sounds entirely reasonable of course....

[wansingct]

I've heard of virii/other things give themselves rights to act as part of the operating system and then disallow anyone else permissions for messing with its folders....could be the case here....

[qt 3.14159]

Sure enough, I am currently in the process of updating another computer to XP and have just run the Service Pack 1 install. IC and IP are names of two of the subfolders created for the installation of SP1.

It does seem odd to me that you cannot delete them though, normally they would be automatically deleted when the SP finished running. I do know that it doesn't delete part of it if the SP errors out and fails to complete for some reason.

Good luck figuring out how to remove them, but it doesn't sound to me like they are virus related.

[Whisper9999]

Originally posted by qt 3.14159
Just a thought...

When you run Service Pack 1 it creates a file that is made up of random numbers and letters and then it deletes it at the end of the installation. Did you have a service pack installation go bad at some point?

For general interest, it looks like you were right. I did the first step of the kb article and it didn't quite work because the subfolders had NO ownership. But the Advanced tab of the folder's properties under Security let me add Administrator as owner and so then I was able to delete it.

Inside each folder were 3 cab files one name Winn something and one named Updates, i.e. probably SP1 stuff. Thx for the tip - it kept me from worry too much about hacks...