Windows 10 storage menu says updates are taking up 10.8GB of space.

[joe_clark]

The windows storage menu says that 10.8GB of space is being used by updates. This wouldn't be a big issue except that my C drive is only 120GB because my computer is older and m.2 nvme drives were expensive at the time. I tried looking up what is causing this but pretty much got nowhere because every guide I was able to find was talking about updates taking up space on installs where the user had updated from window 7 or 8 to windows 10. I built this computer around 6 years ago and it has only ever had windows 10 on it so there are no windows.old folders or anything like that. I also have tried running windows update and it says that I am fully up to date, I assume that it is holding on to old updates or something for recovery purposes but I'm not sure. I have also tried both disc cleanup menus as well as CCleaner and none give the option to remove any of these files. If anyone has any idea why windows update is using up so much space any info is appreciated.

[TheBean]

is your windows updated or is the update downloaded but not installed?

try restarting your computer and see it it goes away

 

[GuiltySpark_]

Open the start menu and search for Disk Cleanup. Select your C: drive, then click the button for "Clean up system files". Check every box, click OK and let it run. 

 

Should look like this prior to hitting OK. I'm curious how much space it says you'll gain. 

 

[joe_clark]

This is with every box checked, I keep looking up and down the list but windows update cleanup wasn't there. Also after running it with every box checked it still didn't delete any of the update files.

[TetraSky]

@rickeo To try and see where OP was coming from, I tried looking it up myself on my own machine. Turns out, running Disk Cleanup doesn't change the number that you see in Win10's Settings as far as Update at the bottom goes :

Spoiler

Here's what I did.
First, I compared Disk Clean-Up to Windows 10's temporary files setting. Settings shows the temporary files to be removed to be larger, with 119MB in "updates" at the bottom. The difference is size is likely due to Settings also wanting to clean up the Downloads folder.

 

Spoiler

 

I then ran Disk Clean-Up. Made sure to select the option to clean up System Files.

Spoiler

After that cleanup, settings still showed the 119MB in update, but only 126KB in temporary files (once Downloads was deselected). So it did clean all the same temporary files. Just not the update ones.

Spoiler

 

As such, from doing so, I can safely deduce that Disk Cleanup does not, in fact, remove the space used by updates, just like OP said in their post.

 

 

 

@joe_clark These files are indeed windows update temporary files and should normally remove themselves after a while. You can force this behavior by deleting them yourself.

After investigating, I pinpointed their location as being the usual windows update temporary download folder. As you can see, mine is exactly 119MB, just like Settings says in my previous screen captures.

Spoiler

 

To properly clean this folder, you can technically just outright delete everything in it if it lets you, but it likely won't help, you need to stop the service. The easiest way to do so, is to do the following:

 

Quote

1. Open the Start Menu, once open don't touch anything and simply start typing the following

   
   cmd

   to search for the command prompt
    
2. Run as administrator
   Spoiler

   

    

3. Accept the UAC prompt that Windows displays.

4. Run the following commands and hit enter after each line:

   
   net stop wuauserv
   
   cd %Windir%\SoftwareDistribution
   
   del /f /s /q Download
   
   net start wuauserv

    

This should clean up everything. Reboot afterward. For me, this "fixed" it and settings doesn't report anything anymore for Updates.

 

Find out more here:
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/16/how-to-delete-downloaded-windows-update-files/
As well as another method. Including a batch file to do it automatically simply by double clicking on it.

 

 

Edit : God this forum is buggy as shit with images sometimes and didn't realize PowerShell was trash and didn't recognize some CMD commands.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Windows

[joe_clark]

@TetraSky Thank you, that was the solution I was looking for. I knew that Windows Update likes to keep updates that were recently installed but over 10GB seemed excessive.

 

@TheBean I had already run windows update before posting this and there were some updates that I installed. After that it said windows update was using something like 11.7GB and I restarted my computer which did bring it down to 10.8. After that I tried checking for updates again and it said I was up to date and tried restarting again but it wasn't going down from 10.8 so at that point I made this post.

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, joe_clark said:

Thank you, that was the solution I was looking for. I knew that Windows Update likes to keep updates that were recently installed but over 10GB seemed excessive.

If it worked for you, I'm glad that it did.