Okay - those are certainly not critical system folders so don't be concerned that you are going to break Windows. And understand you can have 100s of folders and subfolders with the exact same name, as long as they are not in the same folder.
I don't suspect anything malicious here, but just to be sure, have you done a complete anti-malware scan? If so, and clean, then we can press on.
Just to avoid terminology misunderstandings (since Microsoft did not make it easy on us) when you are looking at those two folders - that is, when you "drill down" into the file structure of the hard drives under My Computer, you are using "Windows Explorer" - not to be confused with Internet Explorer.
When viewing the contents of a folder with Windows Explorer, you have several view options to choose. From the Main Menu, go to View and select either Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, or Details. Also, you should have
[external image: Posted Image] on your Standard Toolbar that opens a drop-down menu of the same view options.
There are few ways this could have happened that I can think of:
- A hard drive upgrade - a new C drive replaced the old, which then became D drive. The program used to create the folder on the drive now designated as D drive, was reinstalled again on the new C drive.
- A user of that computer, using that "name" account, created both folders to store video files.
- The program was installed twice, once using the default settings on C:\Documents&Settings\Name\MyDocuments\MyVideos\Folder 3, the other time using D:\MyVideos\Folder 3.
What you need to determine is if these folders are used by any programs commonly used on that computer - a program used to manager camcorder or digital camera videos, for example. If a program, then you need to check the programs options for file locations, or use the program to load or save a new video, then see which of the two folders it is using. Then you will know you can safely delete the folder on the other drive - if there's nothing inside you want.
After you have determined which folder is still used, see if there is anything in the other you want to keep, and move (cut and paste) file contents to the correct folder, then delete.
If you still feel uncomfortable deleting files or folders for fear of breaking something, a trick I use all the time for files and folders I don't recognize, or don't know what they do anymore, is simply rename them for a little while. If the file, folder (or a file inside the folder) is needed, you will get some sort of file not found notice, and you simply rename it back.
Renaming has to be done in such a way that you can easily remember what to name it back to if necessary. So what I do is append the word "delete" and today's date to the original file/folder name.
For example:
Old filename: FileName.xyz
New filename: FileName.xyz-delete-7-12-08
Old folder name: FolderABC
New folder name: FolderABC-delete-7-12-08
If something breaks, I don't have to guess what the old name was, and can easily rename it back, and be good to go. If all is fine, I leave it for a week or two (sometimes months if the file/folder is buried deep in the drive somewhere and I forget about it) to see what happens and make sure all my programs still work properly.
Whenever I stumble upon the file or folder again, I can see by the date how long it has been with this name, and easily determine if it is safe to simply delete it.
