I'm on Windows 7 Pro x64. Today i got a random "Windows needs to restart in order for these changes to take effect" popup.
A few hours earlier, i had a weird USB driver popup needing admin priveledges to run, and it kept popping up like that about 5 or 6 times in a row even though i kept telling it yes. The driver was for a USB N64 type controller.
I don't know what piece of software was actually wanting to restart windows, so i hunted around and found this post. Unfortunately i couldn't get the software links for Pend Moves, but i was able to use RegEdit and examine HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations
And in there i found the following text:
\??\C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\1.3.36.332\??\C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\1.3.36.342Yes it literally has two question marks as part of the path. I'm pretty sure the driver for this USB controller has nothing to do with google, and i haven't touched any google software for a long time (and using firefox not chrome). I'm scanning various things with Panda Dome but so far it hasn't detected anything malicious.
Also i went to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\ReportingEvents.log and looked at the latest entries and they say this:
{2A6FC5E9-1EDD-4A32-AA55-6C21E6DBD3EE} 2023-12-15 12:37:38:078-0500 1 147 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 AutomaticUpdates Success Software Synchronization Windows Update Client successfully detected 15 updates.{160D683D-FB77-4717-8205-D96502E43AD5} 2023-12-15 15:48:47:746-0500 1 147 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 ChkWuDrv Success Software Synchronization Windows Update Client successfully detected 0 updates.{049326ED-37B9-42F8-8C66-41B6790AAC5B} 2023-12-15 15:49:24:251-0500 1 147 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 ChkWuDrv Success Software Synchronization Windows Update Client successfully detected 0 updates.{F64E40C9-969F-4D83-AD15-C8A17309A891} 2023-12-16 05:36:20:668-0500 1 147 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 ChkWuDrv Success Software Synchronization Windows Update Client successfully detected 0 updates.{B04E7A8E-15A0-4BE2-8856-020492B76869} 2023-12-16 06:29:01:636-0500 1 147 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 AutomaticUpdates Success Software Synchronization Windows Update Client successfully detected 15 updates.
I don't know what ChkWuDrv is or where it is located. I also don't know why it is saying 0 updates then 15 updates back n forth a lot. Note on Dec 15 i used a different USB N64 controller (a red one) that did not have the driver admin priveledges required even once, but today i tried both of them and the black one did and it was a different driver.
What should i do? I still do not know what software is wanting to do the windows restart, or where it is located.