Duplicate "My Documents" Folder within itself

[Videographer]

Hi,

I am backing up my laptop in order to wipe it and reinstall windows and my software, I keep most of my files on D: and just windows and some apps on C:

I have a problem with the my documents folder. I keep it on D: as D:\documents and have had this setup for a few years with multiple computers meaning that I can always migrate the my docs folder easily. Most important files reside on different parts of D: but some programs insist on using my docs (games especially)

I have gone to copy the folder, but inside it, there is another my documents, and inside that, another my documents. I dont know why this has happened or how, but inside the first folder files are also duplicated, and they look like exact copies of the originals with the same time stamps etc.

Is it safe to delete the duplicate files and does anyone know why this might have happened?

 

[qazzi]

well for starter, try running a scan on malwarebyte anit-malaware. here https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/ after that if everything is ok then you can safely delete it...just make sure no software is going to use it.

 

[JeckeL]

Is it safe to delete the duplicate files and does anyone know why this might have happened?

As someone else mentioned it sounds very malware-ish... even if you try to manually drag my documents into my documents yourself it'll throw an error and prevent you from duplicating a folder within itself