Adobe I-Filter creating thousand of folders on system root.

Question

I have adobe's v9 ilfilter installed with Sharepoint 2010 on a windows server 2008 r2 box. Indexing seems to working fine and pdf results are returned in a a sharepoint search.  My problem however is that thousands of directories are being created on the C:/ drive beginning with "A9R" followed by a bunch of numbers and letters with legitimate pdf documents (with normal documents names) inside. I read about a similar issue here http://forums.adobe.com/thread/707241?tstart=1 and here http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/2008/12/adobe_pdf_ifilter_9_for_64bit.html (about half way down the page). No one seems to have a solution let alone an explanation. Even more scary, is that I cannot seem to find any of these documents anywhere else.

PLEASE HELP!!

Answer 1

Nothing?!? Has no one even heard of this?

Answer 2

I have adobe's v9 ilfilter installed with Sharepoint 2010 on a windows server 2008 r2 box. Indexing seems to working fine and pdf results are returned in a a sharepoint search.  My problem however is that thousands of directories are being created on the C:/ drive beginning with "A9R" followed by a bunch of numbers and letters with legitimate pdf documents (with normal documents names) inside. I read about a similar issue here http://forums.adobe.com/thread/707241?tstart=1 and here http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/2008/12/adobe_pdf_ifilter_9_for_64bit.html (about half way down the page). No one seems to have a solution let alone an explanation. Even more scary, is that I cannot seem to find any of these documents anywhere else.

PLEASE HELP!!

I have the same issue too. WS2K8R2 using the ifilter with windows search. For the moment I am moving the created folders (and the files within them) into a temp folder which i wil purge once i can confirm that the originals are all intact.

-Mark.

Answer 3

Hi,

We’ve tested this in our out of the box environment and we are not experiencing this issue with this iFilter.  From Adobe’s website you mentioned, their support team mentions that a PATH variable must be set to iFilter location.  That makes me wonder if you have other system variable set differently such as TEMP or TMP.  Try comparing to an out of the box server for the system variable settings.

Since the files are created by the Adobe iFilter have you tried getting support from them? 

There are also other iFilters you may want to consider, an example would be:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/opal/archive/2008/12/10/pdf-ifilter-battle-foxit-vs-adobe-64bit-version.aspx

Other things to check as well are to make sure iFilter is installed correctly http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2293357.  This may not apply to you since you are able to index PDF files.

---

Regards, Savoeurn Va Microsoft Online Community Support

Answer 4

Hello!

 

I am also experiencing problems with the Adobe PDF iFilter v9 on Windows Server 2008 R2.

 

On some machines it runs just fine and i can index and search pdf documents.

On other machines (and a difference is that DFS-Namespace und DFS-Replication is just installed, but not really active) i have the same problems with

folders on the root of c:\ beginning with A9R (numbers and letters).

 

Has anyone a solution (other than buying i.e. foxit ifilter)?

 

Jochen

Answer 5

I also had the same problem.  I only ended up with about 80 folders created and it's been several weeks since the most recent one was created...but very odd indeed.

Answer 6

Adobe PDF iFilter V11 has the same problem

Answer 7

I have a windows server 2008 r2 SP1 with adobe pdf ifilter v11 that exhibits the A9R folder creation issue. It started shortly after installing ifilter. The server is setup with file shares and is a file server for a small to medium size network. I have traced the issue to the creation of pdf portfolio's. It places a copy of each file in the portfolio in an A9Rxxxx-xxxxxxxx folder on the C drive of the file server, after a portfolio file is created or saved on to the file server. If the portfolio is modified it creates another copy of the files. Since the file also resides in the portfolio wherever it was saved, in this case it appears these are duplicates that can be deleted. This is very annoying, so I may try the foxit filter if no one has any suggestions.

Answer 8

I have a windows server 2008 r2 SP1 with adobe pdf ifilter v11 that exhibits the A9R folder creation issue. It started shortly after installing ifilter. The server is setup with file shares and is a file server for a small to medium size network. I have traced the issue to the creation of pdf portfolio's. It places a copy of each file in the portfolio in an A9Rxxxx-xxxxxxxx folder on the C drive of the file server, after a portfolio file is created or saved on to the file server. If the portfolio is modified it creates another copy of the files. Since the file also resides in the portfolio wherever it was saved, in this case it appears these are duplicates that can be deleted. This is very annoying, so I may try the foxit filter if no one has any suggestions.

I'm also having this same problem...

Answer 9

After having tried all the different suggestions out there I "stumbled" on the REAL solution to this problem (for me at least).

 

Ensure that the "Windows Search" service has "Allow service to interact with desktop" enabled:

 

After enabling this you need to restart the service.

 

Please note that this fix alone (not doing anything else) solves the problem :-)

 

/Tom

Answer 10

After setting the allow service to interact with desktop, it broke the Windows Search indexing.  I've been able to toggle this back and forth and see it work and break over and over again.  DO NOT check this if you want the indexer to continue indexing.

Has anybody else been able to resolve this issue?  I'm running the latest Adobe PDF iFilter 11 for 64-bit platforms on a newly built 2008 R2 server.

Answer 11

Anyone find a fix for this yet? 

Answer 12

Is there any fix for this after 2 years?

We are still facing teh same issue with SharePoint 2013, pdf iFilter 11 and Windows 2008.

Appreciate if you can post your solution if it worked.

Thanks

Answer 13

We had this Problem since 2013..... and after hours of Google and Trying i have found a solution that seems to work on our terminal-servers. Like normally the solution is stubid and simple.....

First i have set the flag on the service named in all the forums "Allow service to interact with desktop, it broke the Windows Search indexing" and like Adam wrote the index has been deleted. Then reboot the Server, so the service will be restarted automatically and rebuild the index, tested on the customers system.

After this, i had still Folders in the Temp-Directory witch is defined in the HKLM\SW\MS\Windows Search\Gathering Manager -> TempPath, but only new ones, no old pdf's. And they are not in the exact path, they are all in the root of this path, because the users didn't have rights to change something in the defined Folder in the Registry.

So i simply give the user change-rights on the root-folder, enable the heredity to all subfolders -> 30h later i have still no new Folder and the customer makes a lot of new pdf's to indexing today.

The Original-Problem is simple - the iFilter makes a temporary file to a Folder he can Access it (with the user-rights who made the pdf) - after indexing, he want to delete the Folder, but haven't any rights, so the file is still there.

Greetings from Switzerland

Longbow

Answer 14

So what is the exact "solution".?

I have Windows Search running on Server 2012 R2 with Adobe iFilter & all I get is just tons of A9R****** folders in the root of C:

How idiotic is that?

How to at least redirect it to another drive that I do not care about?

Seb

Answer 15

Bump

edit:

A possible (not yet fully confirmed) solution from carstenr23190545

is here

Answer 16

Definitely does NOT work (above "solution")

So back to the same

Root of C: getting filled with A9R****** folders

Answer 17

Anybody any idea at all?

Answer 18

Gave up!

Used free iFilter from Tracker Software

Answer 19

We had this Problem since 2013..... and after hours of Google and Trying i have found a solution that seems to work on our terminal-servers. Like normally the solution is stubid and simple.....

First i have set the flag on the service named in all the forums "Allow service to interact with desktop, it broke the Windows Search indexing" and like Adam wrote the index has been deleted. Then reboot the Server, so the service will be restarted automatically and rebuild the index, tested on the customers system.

After this, i had still Folders in the Temp-Directory witch is defined in the HKLM\SW\MS\Windows Search\Gathering Manager -> TempPath, but only new ones, no old pdf's. And they are not in the exact path, they are all in the root of this path, because the users didn't have rights to change something in the defined Folder in the Registry.

So i simply give the user change-rights on the root-folder, enable the heredity to all subfolders -> 30h later i have still no new Folder and the customer makes a lot of new pdf's to indexing today.

The Original-Problem is simple - the iFilter makes a temporary file to a Folder he can Access it (with the user-rights who made the pdf) - after indexing, he want to delete the Folder, but haven't any rights, so the file is still there.

Greetings from Switzerland

Longbow

I had the same problem but with Adobe iFilter 11 and was unable to find a solution until Longbow3257 

point me to the right direction, except my problem was a little different.

BIG THANKS

The key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager

TempPath is equal to [SOMETHING]\Search\Data\Temp\usgthrsvc

But the last folder didn't existe in the Folder Structure so i just created the usgthrsvc inside the Temp folder.

Without reboot or service restart it started working.

Greetings from Switzerland too