I’ve recently noticed a DLL file from Intel that keep reappearing on my system drive and I’ve tracked this down to the display software on my laptop - I’ve recently moved to a Dell laptop that has an Intel 945GM display adapter. Here’s the DLL in question:
C:\Intel\ExtremeGraphics\CUI\Resource\igfxres.dll
The properties of the DLL show this as the ‘Intel Common User Interface’. The file is loaded by EXPLORER.EXE and is dynamically created in the context of the current user when you right click on the desktop. The file does not exist anywhere else on the computer.
Because I’m a neat freak when it comes to file systems I don’t like having stuff like this lying around (pedantic I know), so I thought that I would see what would happen if I stopped the system from creating the file. I removed Authenticated Users (I run as a standard user) from the system drive so that the DLL could not be created. I then got this:
Before:
After:
Surely the file does not need to be created at runtime and surely it doesn’t need to exist in this location? I tested again after copying the DLL to the SYSTEM32 folder and guess what? It worked just as well. Someone over at Intel needs a slap on the wrist.
3 Comments
I ran into this the other day. If you look in system32, you’ll see a whole bunch of files with names like igfxenu.lrc, igfxdeu.lrc, and so forth. What’s actually happening is that the Intel driver is checking the user’s language settings when they log on, then selecting the appropriate .lrc file and copying it to igfxres.dll. Also, at least with the latest Intel driver, it does make an effort to copy the file into system32. If the user doesn’t have Administrator privileges, this won’t work, so the driver creates that obnoxious directory tree as a fallback. If the root directory has more limited permissions than usual, this doesn’t work either, leaving people with the ugly desktop context menu in your second screenshot.
thank you for the advice about moving it to the system32-folder. i also hate files laying somewhere they dont need to be.
The thing is, Microsoft has standard directories for this garbage under AppData (vista) or Application Data (xp). Dynamically creating a new directory structure is about dumb. Further, the drivers could read this from the OS on the initial installation. It doesn’t need to consume resources creating the same file every single time you log in.