Solved Windows 10 & 11 create tons of empty folders in System32

Wish I had seen this VB script sooner, I wrote a powershell script to do the same thing.

It's the way that disk formatting systems work and have always worked, the OS will not tell you how much actual space is used but only the amount of recoverable data there, which is zero in this case

barman58 said:

It's the way that disk formatting systems work and have always worked, the OS will not tell you how much actual space is used but only the amount of recoverable data there, which is zero in this case

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Learn something new everyday! Next a grape wont be a grape!

I disabled the task and I have deleted 980 empty folders with the name tw-xxxxx.tmp in "C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local" folder location.

you can use this code to disable this task and delete tw-* folders

save it on a bat script
run as administrator


It is your own risk to use that bat script, we do not know any side effect to delete these folders and disable this task yet.

The NTFS system sector size is relatively small / compact compared to some other systems and when a large HDD was one of a 20 MB the sector size was more important than it is today where users have access to multiple Terabyte drives

There are tons of empty folders in "C:\Wİnodows\WinSxS" folder.

Feuer said:

I disabled the task and I have deleted 980 empty folders with the name tw-xxxxx.tmp in "C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local" folder location.

you can use this code to disable this task and delete tw-* folders

save it on a bat script
run as administrator

Code:

schtasks /Change /TN "\Microsoft\Windows\Management\Provisioning\Cellular" /Disable
CD /D C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\
FOR /F "usebackq delims=?" %%i IN (`dir /B /AD TW-*`) DO rd /q /s "%%i"
PAUSE

It is your own risk to use that bat script, we do not know any side effect to delete these folders and disable this task yet.

Click to expand...

Why are you disabling the Cellular Task?

WinSXS is not what it seems, it is a container for duplicates of .DLL files and so the actual space shown is many times the actual space used, this is because they are phantom files, created by a type of symbolic link.

Nothing to be concerned about in normal usage, as it just makes it more efficient for applications to use the correct version of the DLL it needs when there can be multiple versions on the system, from different applications.

Just be carefull with deleting any files or folders in WinSxS as it can cause unpredictable results

Ghot said:

They are created by a Task in Task Scheduler, as shown above in the pics.
The top red dot shows the task that creates the folders and the bottom red dot shows the navigation through the
Task Scheduler.

The top pic is Windows 10, and the bottom pic is Windows 11.


All you need to do is right click and choose: Disable ...for the task shown by the top red dot, to stop the creation of those folders at every logon.

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If I disable the task will it affect ProvTool.exe and what does that do when it's at home?

The-Hive said:

If I disable the task will it affect ProvTool.exe and what does that do when it's at home?

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It just disables the "task". Provtool.exe is unaffected.
I don't know what you mean by... "when it's at home".

In the thread on TenForums, in some cases they had to disable the Logon task and the Cellular task.
Something about a device being on a cellular network.

I'm on a desktop.
All I had to disable was the Logon task.
With the Logon task enabled... every reboot, would add about 20 more tw---------------.tmp folders.
With it disabled, it doesn't add any folders, during reboot.

barman58 said:

As every file or Folder takes up a minimum of one 4096 Byte sector on an NTFS file system the absolute minimum for 40 Folders is 160 MB of disk space - not a lot in itself but it's a large pile of "nothing"

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Actually - no.

Every file and folder has an entry in the MFT. There is some free space in each MFT entry and when a file or folder is small enough to fit in this free space then all its data is stored in the MFT rather than allocating a new cluster for it. Each MFT entry, used or not, has already been allocated, thus creating a new empty file or folder requires no new space to be allocated for it. Only when a folder has a number of files in it will it need a cluster of its own.

Mark Russinovich said:

When the entry data for a directory fits within an MFT record, one attribute type, the index root, describes the location of the entries in the record. As a directory grows, the entries required to describe it can overflow the file's MFT record. In these cases, NTFS allocates index buffers to store additional entries.

Click to expand...

Inside NTFS

Ah... it was an AskWoody thread...

After a year of testing and monitoring, I prefer the second method now, i.e. to not let the tw-* files be created in the first place. Another year on and I haven’t seen any adverse side-effects after disabling both the two scheduled ‘provisioning’ tasks – ‘Cellular’ and ‘Logon’. I haven’t seen a single tw-* temp file since.


(Note that you really only need to disable the Logon task. If you’re a road warrior using a laptop with a built-in mobile adapter (e.g. LTE cellular) then you’ll probably need to disable the Cellular task as well.)

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Hi,
What was that one defcon 3

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
What was that one defcon 3

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Every time I went there in the Win 7 days... it was Defcon 2... never changed. LOL

Hi,
Woodie the drama queen lol
Shame on you for posting that dude

Woody? I'd rather listen to Buzz Lightyear

barman58 said:

Woody? I'd rather listen to Buzz Lightyear

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I just went there for the group B, Win 7 patches (security only).
It was just an easy place to find direct links to the security only patches.


I must be gettin' old. I had to google... Buzz Lightyear. :)



Then, I had to google...
Sheriff Woody, Pixar and Toy Story. Learned all kinds of things today.

Ghot said:

It just disables the "task". Provtool.exe is unaffected.
I don't know what you mean by... "when it's at home".

In the thread on TenForums, in some cases they had to disable the Logon task and the Cellular task.
Something about a device being on a cellular network.

I'm on a desktop.
All I had to disable was the Logon task.
With the Logon task enabled... every reboot, would add about 20 more tw---------------.tmp folders.
With it disabled, it doesn't add any folders, during reboot.

Click to expand...

When it's at home is an English saying which in this case means when it's running

Ghot said:

I just went there for the group B, Win 7 patches (security only).
It was just an easy place to find direct links to the security only patches.

Click to expand...

You didn't think of going to Seven Forums then? This, I think, was the last one available for all to install. Subsequent ones require an Extended Security Update contract, else they will not install.

It's all greek to me - but I vaguely remember in XP days when doing a clean up there were always lots of temporary files to clean up - anything to do with that?

We still have Buzz Lightyear. The original full sized one and he still talks (when turned on). Think they're collectors items now. Still in the "child's" bedroom (now a teenager) - but last time I looked he'd posed Buzz doing this