Uninstalled windows updates- I saved 35GB

[Cibit]

Just wanted to share this experience in case it helps others. I have never been too methodical in keeping my hard drives clutter free and organised. However since I put my operating system on a dedicated 128Gb SSD I found it getting fuller and fuller regardless of how careful I was allowing programs to instal themselves onto C.

Anyway I ran the disk cleanup programme and managed to save 35Gb after clearing out all the temp files windows left from updates.

If your HDD is filling up it may save you a bit of space:)

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/

I am sure I can't be the only one to be a messy bugger:music_whistling:

 

Just a note. I did not uninstal windows updates, the title refers to the updates windows installed and left large amounts of installation files that should have been deleted

Edited August 22, 2016 by Cibit

[HiJack]

You are the only one Cibit :P

[Art-J]

I try to keep my system partition tidy, but never knew which of these update installation files I could get rid of. Thanks for the tip, I trimmed down my 2-year old Win7 install by 4.3 GB and that's a noticeable improvement (how in the name of God did You manage to bloat Your Win7 up to 35 gigs of surplus trash? :D)

[Drag0nWIng]

when I used vista it cost lots of rom to store the system.

and then I upgraded to win 7 it used less storage place then vista.

and now my tablet use win10 insider preview, it seems use less then win7,

however the ~window.bt file and windows.old cost nearly 10gigs on my C:.

hope M$ could do better in the future.

[Cibit]

To be fair microsoft had a win 7 update of 28 GB with a known glitch of not removing obsolete files. I came across it reading the interweb and checked it out:thumbup:

[BitMaster]

when I used vista it cost lots of rom to store the system.

and then I upgraded to win 7 it used less storage place then vista.

and now my tablet use win10 insider preview, it seems use less then win7,

however the ~window.bt file and windows.old cost nearly 10gigs on my C:.

hope M$ could do better in the future.

 

Those files are there for a reason "usually". That reason may or may not apply to you and also true, some things are simply garbage and serve you no other purpose but filling your drive.

 

Your WINDOWS.OLD folder enables you to roll back to a)win7 b)last Win10 build.

 

You can however, if you think you can skip those safety hooks, let Win7/10 delete those files.

 

 

Cleaning 35GB as Cibit did is not seldom but rather the average on systems that arent properly maintained over time.

 

 

You should NOT try to delete the Windows.old folder by hand. Do it and you know why it is a bad idea :)

 

 

In Win10, there is a sub-menue that you should also click and check all relevant items, this submenue holds your older Win10 builds as several other build related files and updates.

I clean those after a few days when I feel safe n happy with whatever new build.

 

Bit

[Drag0nWIng]

I didn't remove windows.old.

After 14901 update, I hope I can roll back to 14393, but when it was updating, the system deleted a little *.dll files made me lost control of my tablet. LOL

Now, I fix that, but after patch 14905, M$ said there are some wrong to the system setting, that user could not roll back to the previous patch( which store in windows.old).

funny insider preview.

[-Rudel-]

If your OS is on a SSD, you can drop the page to 1GB and if you are really not worried, disable recovery and hibernation to save more space.

[SkateZilla]

/Temp/ Folders, Especially the hidden ones, build up...

 

Page File has it's own 32GB SSD ($20),

System Restores etc I disabled, but When I do backup It's usually just install files and licenses.

[MarcSupilami]

The WinSxS (Windows side by side) was a response of Microsoft to a number of compatibility and distribution files storage issues. However, it can grow to multiple dozens of GB over time if not cleaned up. While Disk Cleanup was improved to allow some cleanup of it on Windows 7, on more recent OSes, the DISM Command with the /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup switches will do a better job.

 

Also, since you are unlikely to revert an update, you can delete their downloaded files in %SystemRoot%\SoftwareDistribution\Download (It is recommended that you stop the Windows Update before doing this and restart it afterwards). Finally, temporary files are typically stored in %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Temp. However Disk Cleanup will delete those that are over a week old IF YOU SELECTED TO DO SO!

Edited August 26, 2016 by MarcSupilami

[rrohde]

"Bleachbit" and "CCleaner" are your friends to keep your SSD drives lean and mean. :)

[Yurgon]

Great idea, thanks, Cibit!

 

The "Properties -> Disk cleanup" managed to get rid of some 3 GB, but with only around 6 to 7 GB of free disk space left, that was of quite some help. :thumbup:

[BitMaster]

BTW, turning OFF all your shadow copy functions ( Winsxs ) will void a few ways back in case you loose files, just as a reminder.

 

Just had clients getting a "ZEPTO" infection with ransomware, anything but funny...and one of the ways back is through such shadow files ( tho it is not trivial ).

 

Make a backup and then DISCONNECT the drive!

 

..just as a note, ransomware these days directly scans for all known cloud services and messes those up too.... that aint a vaild and safe backup anymore !

 

Make a backup while you still can, TODAY ;)

[Aginor]

Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotton that cleanup option and not used it for ages. I got almost 6GB on my SSD back. :)