Software Installer Question

[Dana]

By default the software installer puts the downloaded and expanded files in C:DRIVERS\. After the downloads have been installed can I delete those directories or does that break the installer when it tries to determine if there is new software to download. I guess my assumption is there is a file the installer reads to determine this rather than looking at the contents of C:\DRIVERS\

Daba

[GomJabbar]

I 'think' Software Installer checks it's own entries in the registry to determine what is already installed. It does look in the C:\DRIVER\ subdirectories for software available to install. For an experiment, you could rename or move the C:\DRIVERS directory and see if that causes any problems with Software Installer finding what is already installed.

Actually Software installer looks on IBM's site for software that you do not have installed (in addition to looking on your hard disk). If you do not have an available Software Installer update already installed, it will download it to the C:\DRIVERS\ directory if needed, then install it.

[Dana]

I imagine you are correct.
Some confusion exists for me since there are some directory trees from the old ThinkPad updater as well as the new Software Installer which I installed for the first time. I need to see if I can uninstall the old utility.

[LtTPfan]

It also looks in C:\IBMTOOLS besides C:\DRIVERS. Actually, those are the default folders, you can configure it to look elsewhere, other drives, even network shares.

[Dana]

Indeed, removing IBMTOOLS and DRIVERS seemed to break things... I won't do that again.