Any idea what's happened here ?

steady__eddie

Everything was fine with my 7 year old Tosh Satellite (XP, Service pack 3) until I was viewing the Grabit board on here last night. The little yellow shield appeared on my toolbar informing me that a microsaft update was being downloaded. It seemed to last forever and my net meter screen was working overtime on the red pixel front. When the download was complete, a check on net meter totals confirmed that the single update was in the region of 50 plus megabytes. I let it instal and then put it to bed.
When I booted up this morning, I noticed that a new folder had appeared on my external hard drive entitled f7edea9b08b20f00a67bd4423a47ba25. This folder contains 2 folders entitled amd64 and i386. All these files were modified on 15/12/09, 20:45 (the time of the update).
From the properties box on c: drive in control panel, I see that the Capacity is 18.6 GB (don’t laugh, it is 7 years old) and the Free space is 3.11GB so how come these have suddenly been stored externally ? I haven’t changed anything, honest.
If I disconnect my external hard drive, has I occasionally do, and then boot up, will windows load up ? I am reluctant to find out first hand. Many thanks for your comments.

Stompa

A similar folder appeared on my C drive quite a long while ago. My understanding is that it's just a temporary folder created during the update installation process, which for some unknown reason doesn't get deleted (as intended) when the update is completed. As for why it's on your external drive, I imagine the updater decided there was insufficient space on your C drive and looked for space elsewhere.

I doubt that you'll do any harm by booting the PC without the external drive connected.

steady__eddie

Thanks for that Stompa, just done a Google on that file and it sent me back here.

Money_Grabber13579

Yes, it's only put there while the installation process is extracting the files from the installer package which was downloaded. Windows will boot fine without your hard drive connected and you could even delete it f you like! That's what I always do. Although, if you want to be totally sure, just boot up your PC a few times without the external HD turned on, and you'll see that it's ok.

davb

This is from another forum, more relating to Service Packs, but I suspect applies to a lot of MS updates

Windows XP Service Pack Installation Temporary Files Folder : Folder name with random characters. This folder is not required after you install the service pack, and you can safely delete this folder. When you install Windows XP SP1, SP1a or SP2, this temporary folder is created on the volume that has the most free space. The folder name contains random characters, and is not always created on the same volume as the Windows folder. For example, this temporary folder may have the following random names:
9470bb12e8a4f3447657236478e41c5
or similar.
352b81d1c4bf3810e28482d9979
This folder is automatically deleted by Windows XP after you install the service pack. However, if the folder is not automatically deleted by Windows XP, you can safely delete this folder. In most cases, you will receive an Access denied message while accessing or deleting this folder. First, you'll need to Take Ownership of the folder and then delete it safely.

It may do some first run actions on the boot after install, but after that it should be ok to delete.