What are the "Mscreate.dir" files and can I get rid of them?

Question

What are the Mscreate.dir files and can I get rid of them?

Answer

This question was answered on April 10, 2000. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

You may have noticed a bunch of hidden files with 0 bytes called Mscreate.dir in various folders on your system and wondered what these files are and where they come from?

Mscreate.dir files are special Microsoft files that let their apps remove all appropriate folders during an uninstall operation. When you install a Microsoft program, the "setup" program creates one of these hidden files in each folder it places on your hard disk. If you later run Setup in the uninstall mode, it looks for the Mscreate.dir files to determine whether it can delete the folder.

If you delete these files and later run "setup" in uninstall

mode, "setup" won't delete the empty folders. Since these hidden

files don't take up any hard disk space and are important to the

uninstall procedure, you are best off leaving them alone.

REMEMBER, If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Author

Posted by Ken of Data Doctors on April 10, 2000