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Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%\_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive does not cope well with Windows logoff/shutdown…

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/19

From a while back, but still not fixed: [WayBack] Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you l… – Daniela Osterhagen – Google+

Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%\_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you log off or shut down Windows.

This is ridiculous. It’s not as if there weren’t any options to let Windows do that cleanup if the program fails.

It is still not fixed:

[WayBack] Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you l… – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+

Adrian Meacham:

Still doing it all these years later – only the size of the garbage left behind has changed (Size: 58.4 MB (61,303,879 bytes) Size on disk: 67.7 MB (71,061,504 bytes) 1/3 of which is icons) – why this isn’t committed to Chrome instead of held open in %TEMP% is beyond reasoning +Google Drive

Original forum source: [Archive.is] _MEI folder created at windows start – Google Product Forums

by Martin Friedl 3/17/13

Hi,
I just found out that on windows the google drive tool creates a ‘_MEIxxxxx’ folder on every startup of windows. The xxxxx is a number that differs at every startup. On my PC (with windows 7) this folder is created on ‘C:\’ and has a size of about 35MB. SO with every start of windows google drive occopies 35 additional MB. It looks as the content of the folder is mainly Pyhton-files.

Is there a way to prevent google drive from creating an additional folder with every start of windows?

Best regards
Martin

10/21/13
Klint said:
If you exit Google Drive by right-clicking the Google Drive icon in your Windows 7 notification area, and selecting Exit, then Google Drive shuts down properly and correctly deletes the _MEIxxx folder. Unfortunately, it leaves the folder behind if you leave Google Drive running when you log out or shut down. So, yes, it is a bug in Google Drive. It ought to terminate properly when the user logs out.

–jeroen

PS: this seems to be fixed recently as per comments on [WayBack] Just in case you are wondering what these %TEMP%_MEI* folders are about: Google Drive apparently doesn’t clean up correctly when it exits because you l… – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+:

Adrian Meacham +2 For me at least it appears to have very recently changed. What I’m now seeing is that at boot time the previous _MEI is deleted and a new _MEI is created (at least that is what appears to happen: the numbers after _MEI change, and all 75MB, 117 subfolders and 2,848 files show the same created & modified time as the modified time shown on pagefile.sys) — this tested and confirmed regardless of whether Drive is still running or not… very much improved!

Fabio Malfatti – personale +1 +Adrian Meacham Interesting, I rarely reboot (I know I should but …) instead I use suspend. I will keep an eye on it.

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