Hotfixes and Restore Partition

[Ken]

Yesterday I ran a complete virus scan of my HP laptop (G72) and during
the process noticed what looked like MS hot fixes being scanned on the
restoration partition (D. The files had names starting with the "KB"
that such MS hot fixes traditionally have. Since it was a restore
partition I did not expect to see anything named KB but simply some
large image files used to restore the hard drive to it's original state.

My question is: Are MS hot fixes being written to restore/restoration
partitions when they have been downloaded and applied to the OS
partition so that they may be applied after a restoration? I had
noticed that there was several GB's of free space on the D: drive when
it was new, and there still is unused space.

 

[Char Jackson]

Yesterday I ran a complete virus scan of my HP laptop (G72) and during
the process noticed what looked like MS hot fixes being scanned on the
restoration partition (D. The files had names starting with the "KB"
that such MS hot fixes traditionally have. Since it was a restore
partition I did not expect to see anything named KB but simply some
large image files used to restore the hard drive to it's original state.

My question is: Are MS hot fixes being written to restore/restoration
partitions when they have been downloaded and applied to the OS
partition so that they may be applied after a restoration? I had
noticed that there was several GB's of free space on the D: drive when
it was new, and there still is unused space.

This doesn't directly address your question, but here goes. I have a
6-month old HP laptop that came with a Restore partition, but HP oddly
had it set up so that the Restore partition had a drive letter (and
was therefore mounted and completely visible as part of the file
system.) I left it that way for a short time, but noticed that temp
files were being written to that partition, and not cleaned up
afterwards, when I would install things like Office 2010 updates.

When I noticed that, I removed the drive letter from the Restore
partition.

So while I didn't see 'KB' stuff being written there, I did see other
things being written to that partition, and I definitely don't want
the Restore partition to be used like that.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Yesterday I ran a complete virus scan of my HP laptop (G72) and during
the process noticed what looked like MS hot fixes being scanned on the
restoration partition (D. The files had names starting with the "KB"
that such MS hot fixes traditionally have. Since it was a restore
partition I did not expect to see anything named KB but simply some
large image files used to restore the hard drive to it's original state.

My question is: Are MS hot fixes being written to restore/restoration
partitions when they have been downloaded and applied to the OS
partition so that they may be applied after a restoration? I had
noticed that there was several GB's of free space on the D: drive when
it was new, and there still is unused space.

I suspect what you are seeing are hot fixes available at the time the
system shipped that were not a part of the original system image. It
is easier to produce a system image once and then test and add KBs as
they become available by having the restore procedure run the .EXEs
than it is to re-produce a system image every time new KBs become
available.

So, I'd check the dates of the existing KBs and if that doesn't confirm
that scenario, I'd see if any new ones are being added after the next
round of updates.

--
Zaphod

Adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly),
manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships,
often thought to be completely out to lunch.

 

[Ken1943]

Yesterday I ran a complete virus scan of my HP laptop (G72) and during
the process noticed what looked like MS hot fixes being scanned on the
restoration partition (D. The files had names starting with the "KB"
that such MS hot fixes traditionally have. Since it was a restore
partition I did not expect to see anything named KB but simply some
large image files used to restore the hard drive to it's original state.

My question is: Are MS hot fixes being written to restore/restoration
partitions when they have been downloaded and applied to the OS
partition so that they may be applied after a restoration? I had
noticed that there was several GB's of free space on the D: drive when
it was new, and there still is unused space.

Hot fixes do use a second partition to run some files. When these files
are deleted they don't show in recycle bin. I use Diskeeper Undelete and
they show up there. So if your restore partition has a drive letter, it
will write there. These files are usually {really long}.


KenW