Windows – GUID foldername on Windows Server 2008 R2

windowswindows-server-2008-r2

Recently I'm seeing GUID folder names pop up on the system drive of my Server 2008 R2 machine (example below). Does anyone have any idea as to what might be causing these? If you open the folder there's nothing only an empty amd64 folder within.

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I think it might be WSUS unpacking patches and failing to clean up properly after itself

EDIT 2014-11-24 Added screenshot of permissions

Permissions on folder

Best Answer

You're close--close enough that the folders might have been created as part of the Windows Update process. But Windows update itself didn't unpack the patches there--it always downloads to %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download.

These folders were created by Windows Installer. To quote from this MSDN article:

The ROOTDRIVE property specifies the default drive for the destination directory of the installation. If the Directory column of the Directory table indicates the root destination directory by a property name that is undefined, the installer uses the value of the ROOTDRIVE property to resolve the path to the destination directory.

If ROOTDRIVE is not set at a command line or authored into the Property table, the installer sets this property. During an administrative installation the installer sets ROOTDRIVE to the first connected network drive it finds that can be written to. If it is not an administrative installation, or if the installer can find no network drives, the installer sets ROOTDRIVE to the local drive that can be written to having the most free space.

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