WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive
My drive has a directory ‘78bbe1988d534676d0’. Inside this directory is a setup.exe. What is this setup.exe? Even though I am admin, I cannot open or view any of the files within this folder. This directory has a whole bunch of _lp subdirectories. I store all my VMWare VM’s on this drive. When I open a VM, all subdirectories Date Modified change to the date of use. What is all this stuff? Thank you.
One trick might be to download a data recovery tool. DMDE ignores administrator privileges.
Open the partition, expand the $Root, navigate to your folder, r-click the EXE file and Recover it to another drive or folder.
Now see if you can r-click the file and view its properties. Open it with 7Zip and decompress it, if applicable.
Upload it to virustotal.com and scan it for malware.
View it in a hex editor, eg HxD:
Hi fzabkar, thanx for the response. However, at this point, I just want to know if this directory came as packaged by WD. I don’t remember seeing it when I fired up the drive and started using it. I don’t care too much about the contents of the directory. I can view the properties of the .exe and all the other files in the directory, but none have any reference to WD as owner/source. If the directory did not come from WD, I’m going to wipe the drive and start fresh. Do you know if this directory came from WD and is needed by the drive to perform as expected?
I have no idea where the file came from. Sorry.
The directory “78bbe1988d534676d0” and its contents sound like they are related to VMware virtual machines (VMs). VMware often creates folders with randomly generated names to store VM-related files, such as configuration files, virtual disks, and snapshots.
The “setup.exe” file inside this directory may be related to the VMware Tools installation or some other VMware software component. VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance and usability of VMs running on VMware platforms. e.g: romanticism
As for the “_lp” subdirectories, they could be temporary or cache folders created by VMware or by the operating system during VM operations. These folders may contain logs, temporary files, or other data used by VMware processes.
The reason you cannot open or view the files within this directory, even as an admin, could be due to permissions or because the files are in use by VMware processes. VMware VM files are often locked while the VM is running to prevent data corruption.
