Windows Strange new folder in strange place

I stuck my head into my files partition this morning and found a new folder that I hadn't put there. The folder is named "36a9495a1546f58c794276680fbdac" and contains a single file, named "msxml4-KB927978-enu.log." It's clean for viruses, and a bit of Googling has revealed that it's just some leftovers from a recent Windows Update that didn't clean up after itself properly. So, I'm not terribly concerned about it and have already deleted it, but there is still one thing nagging at me.

Location.

My hard drive has two partitions, C:\ for Windows and programs, and D:\ for files. No installer is ever directed to the D drive and not a single program is run from there - everything is installed to C:\Program Files. Even programs like PuTTy and the RealVNC viewer which can run from a standalone .EXE have dedicated folders in program files. Both partitions have more than 4GB of free space. Why did the update write its temporary files to my storage partition? What was wrong with creating C:\temp or using C:\Windows\Temp? Why did the installer feel the need to grab some space on a partition it wasn't using and forget to clean up after itself?

 

my computer did this to me once. im not sure why windows does what it does i guess its just beacuse the grass is green, and i forgot to mow the lawn, but thats just the answer that i use.

sorry, i cant help you much more than that...

 

Afaik, it automagically picks the partition with the most free space.

 

seems simple enough...
do you know if there are any tweaks or settings to specify a location, or restrict locations/drives.

 

There have been no tweaks regarding the drives, and the 'partition with the most space' explanation works for me.