Hi Tom,

If the IT person applies the patch again without rebooting (but the previous patch switched the system into a pending reboot state) then this should not (IMO) mess up the file replacement logic. The next patch will again detect the locked files and write another set of "files to be replaced at reboot". The next reboot will then replace the files from the first patch and after that the files from the second patch.

The "delete files" scenario can only happen when the temporary files are not available when the Windows system reboots. Windows removes the original (old) file and tries to move the (new) files from the temporary location to the final target location.

Friedrich