Change Windows Update Download Location

reporting,

Look here:


It's a simple registry change away. Happy Holidays!

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

Happy holidays to you too Tony!

Unfortunately, although interesting, that is not what I am looking for... That modifies the default download directory that IE uses. What I want to do is modify the location that Windows Update uses for its downloads.

The default for these downloads appears to be C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution. A search through the registry for "SoftwareDistribution" returned values like this:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Reporting\EventCache\Sus\CurrentCacheFile = C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\EventCache\{F7D666AF-B04D-419D-9AEE-7C1D83B89915}.bin

But not something that would indicate that making a registry change would change the location that Windows Update uses for downloads...

Any other ideas?

Thanks very much,

John Marrett
Crystal Reports Trainer & Consultant

You should change the default location for everything in SBS, including:
Exchange databases and logs
User shares
Client apps
WSUS
Faxing

Keep those all off the system drive.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP

Thanks Pat, but I'm not sure how to make those changes. Can you please explain how to move the default locations you listed?

John Marrett
Crystal Reports Trainer & Consultant

Moving Data Folders for Windows Small Business Server 2003

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP

Thanks again Pat. I took a look at your doc ... but I didn't see anything there about moving the default Windows Update directory.

Regards,

John Marrett
Crystal Reports Trainer & Consultant

Are you talking about the Windows Update folder that has the WSUS updates download to it? That's in the link I posted in your other question.

Or are you talking about the default location of the Automatic Updates where it downloads the monthly patches for installation on a single machine? Those, I've never concerned myself with and as near as I can tell, the service figures out the drive with the most space and downloads them to that drive into a randomly named folder like ab51c4c7af891deee910cc48c (for example)

Thanks LWC. I am talking about the location of the Automatic Updates. C:\Windows\Software Distribution on our new Dell server was nearly empty when it was delivered. It now takes up 1.26 GB! FYI, we don't use WSUS (C:\WSUS takes up hardly any room on our server).

By the way, I think those random folders you mentioned (the ones that sometimes don't get deleted...) are used by some installs instead of the Temp directory.

John Marrett
Crystal Reports Trainer & Consultant