Mysterious blank folder keeps showing up on my desktop

Question

I have a folder with no name on my Windows desktop. The name is literally empty:

I'd like to get rid of this. Oh, easy you say? Well here's where things get interesting. First, if I click on it and hit Delete, it just comes back within a day, like a zombie coming back from the dead.

Okay, great maybe I can hide it or something. Well, if I try to right click on it to modify the folder properties, it becomes clear this isn't actually a real file:

If I select "Create shortcut", nothing happens. If I double click on it to try to open it, nothing happens. What does the actual file system look like, you ask? Nothing:

Any ideas on how to kill this thing once and for all?

Update:

Contents of desktop.ini:

[LocalizedFileNames]
migwiz.lnk=@%windir%\system32\migwiz\wet.dll,-588

Contents of Public folder desktop.ini:

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21799

Another Update:

I can Cut the folder and paste it somewhere else on the desktop. If I paste the folder to some other folder on my disk, I get this helpful error:

Answer 1

According to this discussion, this issue seems to be related to remnants of an old Microsoft Office 2010 installation.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/256250-random-empty-folder-keeps-appearing-desktop.html

The fix suggests searching the registry for 138508BC-1E03-49EA-9C8F-EA9E1D05D65D and removing occurrences.

Answer 2

Going to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\

and removing these keys:

138508BC-1E03-49EA-9C8F-EA9E1D05D65D

0875DCB6-C686-4243-9432-ADCCF0B9F2D7

appears to have taken care of this bizarre problem.

Answer 3

Had the same error here. Not a folder icon though but an empty file icon.

Did a full system scan for malware / virus: Nothing.

I then deleted the two regdb keys as mentioned in the suggestion/tip above and the problem went away immediately.

Deleted entries

• [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace{0875DCB6-C686-4243-9432-ADCCF0B9F2D7}] @="Microsoft OneNote Namespace Extension for Windows Desktop Search"

• [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace{138508bc-1e03-49ea-9c8f-ea9e1d05d65d}] @="MAPI Shell Folder"

Answer 4

I also had Office 365 (2015+) click-n-run and Office 2010 installed. Office 365 was uninstalled, Office 2010 is still running on the system. PC running windows 10.

To fix search/run on your PC for

regedit

Backup your registry or the class you are editing. I fixed the issue using this solution but you can also remove the key found by trying to move the foder and getting the ID from the error message (as described in the problem description - Another Update) between the curly brackets ::{xx_ID}

In my case the issue was in:

[HKEY_USERS\{your-user-sid}\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID]

After removing those keys I deleted the icon from desktop and restarted.

The icon is gone.

Answer 5

Please open registry and find this path..

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\

Then find the name without any value. Usually this one {138508BC-1E03-49EA-9C8F-EA9E1D05D65D} has not set any value. Please delete that entry by right-clicking and delete.

Answer 6

1.Uninstall the Microsoft office.

2 Delete the "office" files from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft

3.Rename the the file Microsoft Help as "Microsoft Help.old" from C:\ProgramData

4.Restart the system