Windows update failed and took space
- Thread starter Louay
- Start date
3Gb is a lot of space by anyone's standards, however, excessive disk space usage by Windows Update is one of my pet moans (I'm seemingly the only one to ever mention it though). What I find is that following a disk clean (make sure you use the clean system files option as well) is that free space returns sometimes a few days, sometimes a week or so later, but it always returns. This months updates used around 1gb of space but nearly a week later and I'm actually 1.1Gb up on the deal.
I'm surprised others don't mention this but there you go... whether yours will return due to a failed update I can't say for sure, but do run the full system files clean and see what happens. A browser clean does no harm either, I usually combine the two following updates and then finish with a defrag of the HDD.
I'm surprised others don't mention this but there you go... whether yours will return due to a failed update I can't say for sure, but do run the full system files clean and see what happens. A browser clean does no harm either, I usually combine the two following updates and then finish with a defrag of the HDD.
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Sounds (I say all words when reading...) like the C:\$WINDOWS.~BT might be full given the number of GBytes you mention.
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Post-post-aside: I just read somewhere or other that uSoft is going to download automatically all the files for a Windows 10 Upgrade to users whether or not they have decided to upgrade. This might only happen if users have selected "automatic download and install" for regular updates.
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Those sound big big numbers to me, more like what you would expect if W10 upgrade files were being stored somewhere. Perhaps worth checking the folder brokensoftware mentions above. I don't have Windows Update set to automatically install, perhaps that is why I haven't been nagged with the W10 update 'App'.
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Already did all of it 
Inclusive the updates that I already had installed (office updates from years ago) it was around 1GB.
Before installing, I had around 75GB free space.
After installing, I had 71 to 70GB free space left.
Right now it is at 71GB free space, but I'll watch how it goes.
Inclusive the updates that I already had installed (office updates from years ago) it was around 1GB.
Before installing, I had around 75GB free space.
After installing, I had 71 to 70GB free space left.
Right now it is at 71GB free space, but I'll watch how it goes.
Today saw 9 optional updates. My free space went from 55.4Gb to 54.5Gb. I've since run a disk clean (including system files) and followed that by a restart and defrag followed by another restart. The disk clean took some 25 minutes in all and reclaimed only a few 10's of Mb. In other words next to nothing. This is typical behaviour of Windows Update although at some future point I expect to see a sudden jump back up in the free space allocation.
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I have just installed the 9 optional updates and made a log of the free space.
Code:
72.9GB start
72.6GB before restart, installed 3 updates, 1.4MB
72.4GB after restart, installed 2 updates, 3.6MB
72.2GB before restart
72.3GB after restart, installed 2 updates, 4.4MB
71.9GB before restart
72.0GB after restart, installed 2 updates, 8.4MB
71.9GB before restart
72.0GB after restart
That's interesting. So yours also took 0.9Gb of space when installing the updates but then you got it back following a disk clean. Mine almost always comes back some days later, as if files have been marked for deletion but not yet deleted. I find even the smallest updates exhibit this odd behaviour in that they can take masses of space.
For anyone mildly interested in all this the free space had not so far returned following the single Flash Update. Today I ran the basic disk clean (not including system files) and it was reported that around 18Mb could be freed. Yes, just 18Mb. I ran the cleanup and lo and behold, free space now back at 55.4Gb
