It may be alarming to search out an unknown folder or file in your laptop, not least as a result of malware can set up short-term information with out your data that permit an an infection to cover or unfold. In the event you’re a Home windows 11 customers, the empty “inetpub” that lately appeared in your laptop is not malicious—and it is really essential to patching a safety flaw in your system.
The folder, noticed final week by Home windows Newest, was created on customers’ gadgets throughout the latest Window 11 Patch Tuesday replace. It’s a part of a safety repair for an elevation of privilege vulnerability (labeled CVE-2025-21204) within the Home windows Replace Stack that enables attackers entry to switch system information or folders, although Home windows Newest stories that Microsoft hasn’t clarified precisely how the folder is expounded to the patch aside from providing “elevated safety.”
In the event you discover the inetpub folder in your gadget, don’t delete it. If you have already got, don’t despair—you may get well it to make sure the vulnerability is patched.
How you can get well a deleted “inetpub” folder on Home windows 11
In the event you by chance deleted the empty inetpub folder in your laptop working Home windows 11, you have to restore it for the safety patch to be efficient. When you can usually get well deleted information and folders from the Recycle Bin, File Historical past, or a backup (or utilizing restoration software program), there’s a particular course of to revive the inetpub folder as described by Home windows Newest:
What do you assume to date?
-
Go to Management Panel > Applications > Applications and Options.
-
Click on Flip Home windows options on or off to tug up a dialog field.
-
Examine the field subsequent to Web Info Companies and click on OK.
This may recreate the deleted folder with the identical safety protections as the unique.
