One day I started getting Hot Fix files on my G drive.
Thinking about this and forming a theory, this makes perfect sense. Everything is starting to fall into place here, actually! I'm convinced Windows Update has managed to get confused as to what updates it has installed. So it looks at available updates, sees a hotfix it thinks it needs, and downloads it. Normally, this download will download an installer to the Windows\Installer folder, however, if you don't have enough disk space, Windows Update will use any available Hard Disk it has access to. This is the first step of Windows Update- downloading it. Second, it runs that installer with a few arguments to say "be quiet and pretend you don't exist, I'll hum quietly to keep the user entertained". This works just fine- If that installer doesn't have a problem. In this case, that installer does have a problem because it finds that it is already installed, so it quits. But this confuses the heck out of Windows Update, which throws up it's hands and then forgets to delete the file it downloaded without leaving itself a note for later saying that update is installed. As a result, It won't be long until it sees "oh hey, another update" which is in fact the same one. Since the installer never finishes, Windows Update never marks that particular update as being installed, so it keeps thinking it's new; and each time it downloads it and doesn't delete it.
Obviously, the big thing we need to do is fix windows Update. Nothing else will resolve this problem, since Windows Update will continue to download the same updates over and over again and they will continue to consume more and more disk space. You can delete the contents of the Installer Folder, but that won't stop Windows Update from being annoying and also continuing the fill it up.
One thing you could try to fix the Windows Update tool is the
"Microsoft Fix-it Center"Choose "Windows" in "Select a Problem Area".
Choose "Install or Upgrade Software or Hardware" in the "What are you trying to do?" section.
Choose "Windows Update"
The first item should be pointing at
this. Run that little bugger. Hopefully it twiddles the Update data files so that it is no longer confused.
EDIT: If you need more disk space- run the installer clean-up tool before hand too. Or just delete the installers from the installer folder in the windows dir.
After that, I say run the aforementioned Installer cleanup tool, which should delete a good portion of the Installers in the Installers folder. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if you don't know if you need them, you probably don't. This should get everything back in sync.
