Mysterious Registry Files

October 19, 2020 5:10 PM

My C:\Users\(name) folder has 2 One Drive sub folders. One contains the contents of the One Drive. The other is named SkyDrive in its path even though it has One Drive as its external label. SkyDrive contains mostly recognizable flotsam with the exception of a Documents folder that contains 4 registration entries with various dates in 2016. The flotsam files are dated up to 2017.

I always genuflect before registry files.
SkyDrive seems to be an earlier version of One Drive that I had not installed.
SkyDrive is not listed as an app installed on my system.
Can I get safely get rid of it? What about the registry files

posted by Raybun to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

If the registration files haven't been touched in four years . . . Can you try renaming them or the folder they are in? That way you can see if anything is blocking you from renaming them which would be an indication that they are currently being used - which I highly doubt. Renaming also has the advantage that you are not deleting them yet you are removing them from any preconfigured access.

I always tell my customers that if they have the space on their drives, time is too precious to go and delete stuff to "clean up". If you are about to run out of disk space and the files are huge - sure thing, go and figure out if they can be removed. But considering how dirt cheap drive space is these days, I tend to just leave stuff I am not sure about and/or just move it to another place.

Too often have I deleted something and then Murphy's Law hits - dang, I needed these files. If the amount of files becomes hard to navigate - try everything to find your stuff, it is amazingly fast and works wonders finding files on your hard drives.

And of course - backup, backup, backup. Before you delete anything, see if you can back it up somewhere.
posted by nostrada at 8:43 PM on October 19, 2020

OneDrive was called SkyDrive until Microsoft was sued for trademark infringement, and forced to rename. I suspect this is true flotsam; you should be able to clean up without issue - but as nostrada says, backing up can't hurt.
posted by scolbath at 6:39 AM on October 20, 2020