Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Microsoft updates - annoying folder proliferation

(1/3) > >>

Carol Haynes:
Anyone got any idea at all how to force Microsoft Update to store its temporary folders in one place and preferably allow access to the folders so that you can see what is going on.

I have folders scattered over numerous drives and they all have subfolders which deny me (and administrator) access!

For example on my system I have loads of partitions - on drive "I" I have the following folders in the root directory:

1a772fc8c37fd821426f30
30d8929e48a7b73c47
3a0484dd97c4d735733c0e
4395cc56333a712314fe5492
73cfb0e8090c5d2261c6f95c

By disabling simple file sharing and forcing an ownership change I discovered that the first folder contains and Update.exe which seems to be a  Windows Service Pack.

Talk about an excellent way to obscure files and give malware the ideal opportunity to hide itself.

I did a google search on the folder names and there are no results (and neither does the MS website have any information on these folder names).

This process of bunging update files anywhere Mess Update feels like has always annoyed me - has anyone found a solution?

40hz:
Is this happening under Vista? On my main XP machine I've got three partitions on the primary HD, four more on my secondary, and two each on two externals. I have display hidden and system  options on, and I'm logged on as Administrator, but I'm still not seeing anything resembling what you're seeing in your root.

cmpm:
I'd bet on them being tied to some adblocker or spyblocker.

f0dder:
Carol: never seen anything like that on any of the XP machines I've dealt with, and not on my Vista laptop either. I don't have a folder structure like that under %TEMP% either :-s

Darwin:
Yeah... I just checked two XP Pro notebooks, one Win2k, and one Vista Home Premium notebook and none of them have anything remotely like the folders you are describing, Carol  :o

PS They're all completely up to date WRT MS updates and each has a copy of either Office 2003 Pro or Office 2007 Enterprise installed, each of which is also fully patched.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page