Hello Willy2,
I'm system-admin and host a few hundred systems.
I am deleting this folder always by hand since years. Nothing happened, I have only more DiscSpace, REALLY!
When you have problems with the WindowsUpdate, it mostely is a problem of an broken DLL-Entry or a overloaded DownloadDirectory.
Magic help for this issues you can find here
It's a wonderful homepage for German Windows-Systems, where you can find a lot of Tools **direct download link deleted by moderator**, mostly supported by Microsoft.
Regards
Ruediger