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Laptop reinstalling all updates and creating odd folders
Hi
I've recently been having some trouble with Windows Update in that it seems to be reinstalling every update ever released for Windows 7, in batches. Every time I go to shut down my laptop there are about 7 or so updates waiting to be installed. At first I just thought these were normal updates, but then I noticed it was reinstalling the Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which I definitely already have. Last night it was doing updates from September 2013, which I also definitely have.
Additionally, Windows is now creating tons of folders on my external hard drive with random strings of numbers and letters for folder names. Every time I boot up my laptop after installing updates, there are more of these folders, so I suspect the two things are linked. It's becoming very annoying because my external drive is becoming filled up with these folders. They all seem to be empty, but I'm worried that it may not be safe to delete them.
Does anyone have any idea how I might fix these problems? Last week my laptop failed to start up properly and told me that it couldn't fix the problem, and that it had to shut down. I shut it off, left it for a while, then when I started it up again it loaded Windows with no problems. I thought that was the end of it, but it may have something to do with the problems I'm now having.
I'm not getting any error codes with Windows Update and it's not saying any of the updates failed to install either.
Thanks for any help!