Root Stubs?????

[KinkiKutie]

Under Windows there is a folder called "user data". This folder has about 24 folders within it..... all with random names such as:
Kdaxepa3 or
2t8fb6xu5

most of these are empty, but some will just say root stub
or root stub..column width or some other gibberish. What are these, were do the come from and what do I do with them?

thank you,
kk

[Cricket]

What OS are you using? Win95, Win98 or WinME? I'm sitting at my Win98SE computer right now and when I open the Windows directory I don't see any folder called "User Data".

Cricket

[GaryRouth]

Do you know how techs keep learning, even after years of repairs? We get questions like this one - that I've never seen before.

So I had to do research to give an answer on this one.

Turns out that the C:\Windows\UserData folder in Win9x is for "Extensible Cache" [You can search your Registry with regedit to find this value - You'll notice that it is in a section for IE settings]. It seems that in Win9x the most common use of this folder is for storing temporary Windows Update information. The type of files stored there are XML files ("Extensible Markup Language" - you'll notice the .xml extension).

I believe XML files are generated by scripts, ActiveX or Javascript. Since Windows Update uses scripts to run, it makes sense that they store some temporary info in such a folder.
____________________________________________________

It seems that such files can be generated during visits to websites (not just the Windows Update website, but any in which the developer has a script run to store temp info in a "Super Cookie"). It bothers me that these files aren't stored in the Internet Temporary folders, but commonly found in Win2000/XP in the Temp files in Documents & Settings\(current computer user)\Local Settings\Temp\UserData - and in Win9x in Windows\Temp. Check to see that the information in the files doesn't include any banking numbers - they shouldn't. Such files do seem to be used for shopping carts online (though I believe prior to the secure transaction, which is generally encrypted). Developers are aware of the security risk of storing sensitive information in these files, as they are not encrypted. If you have any doubt about the sensitivity of the info in any such UserData temp folder, you can delete it (though it will be re-created on the next visit to such a site). You can prevent the use of such scripts by altering the scripting settings in your browser (though you will need to allow scripting for the Windows Update site) http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...ity/setup.mspx Alternate browsers like FireFox tend to have such scripting turned off by default. You can set your browser to prompt you at each script instance.

Here's a blurb from a software-developer site, that is showing developers how to use IE to store "Persistent UserData":
_______________
"That's really all you need to completely manipulate and store gobs of data on the client. The neat thing is that if you have a link to another page, you can load the UserData by name right back into the new page and your visitor can be made to carry it with them all over your site. You can use this for a shopping cart, for user preferences, the contents of a recordset, just about anything you want. Don't forget also that you can store an array of values in a single attribute by using the split and join functions to serialize the array into a string using a delimiter character to separate the values".
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OK, so that's developer tech talk: but what it means is that information is stored during your visit to a web page (sometimes called "XML Super Cookies"). They shouldn't be viruses (you can point your antivirus at them & scan them: they'll probably come up clean).

If you're interesting in looking at the article that the blurb came from, here's the link http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20010615.asp
And here's another link, which refers to "Super Cookies" - generated in this case by javascript http://www.discovermountainbiking.com/userdata.asp

Sorry for the longish answer, but I figured that perhaps quite a few folks might be interested in following up.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[KinkiKutie]

Cricket..... sorry for the delay in being back on here. I also use Win98se

Gary, thank you for the answer.... it does seem to make sense now as lately I have been doing alot of browsing on different catalogue type of sites, looking at furniture, home furnishings and such, but not ordering anything. I think I will just delete them...... and no sorry needed for the long explanation, I have a mind like a sponge and am always interested in the hows and whys of things..... thanks again.

KK

[SiathLinux]

Funny to finally rid my computer of AOL, I had to clean out that file (back when I was running 98se)