Disk Cleanup will not delete windows 11 update files

zalazin

[H]ard|Gawd
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I now have a Surface pro 7 plus 1135G with XE graphics 8GB ddr4 1tb Nvme and 1 tb sd card. I cannot get disk cleanup or storage sense to delete windows update files ran update troubleshooter, tried safe mode, turn off device encryption, deleted and recreated software distribution folder nothing works and I want the 4 GB shown in disk cleanup back.. also tried third party app nothing seems to work.. any clues anyone?
 
Download and install windirstat. Let it run. Find the location of the files in the colored window and delete manually. You should be able to free up other space as well.
 
Download and install windirstat. Let it run. Find the location of the files in the colored window and delete manually. You should be able to free up other space as well.
Okay but what file extension am I looking for here? there are a whole lot of types
 
google say the update is msu but windirstat does not show any msu files...
 
I would first find out what each directory is than file ext. types. Then you can google if the files contained are able to delete them safely. The program sorts directory structure by size/color so the first thing to do is find the directory files are located in.
 
if youve deleted the softwaredist folder, you have deleted the update temp files. 4gb sounds like a hibernation sized file, that on? you can also do a dism cleanup, that will usually free up a bunch too. you could also show us what youre talking about, shift+winkey+s to do a screen cap....
 
hibernation is turned off page file is 7gb and I already did all the dism clean check and restore oh yes I did SFC scannow too. I even followed MS instructions to the letter rename the software distro folder turn off the update service delete the renamed folder restart the update service then try the disk cleanup opps still doesn't work tried third party app partition magics free mini tool nope deleting all the download files didn't work either Oh yes I turned off encryption nope no difference, ran update trouble shooter said it fixed some thing nope still won't clean up...Storage sense won't cleanup drive either. Ran chkdsk /f no errors all windows 11 updates current. I haven't tried a reset and I really don't want deal with a scratch install. Except for this weird thing machine works flawlessly can even run cyberpunk in low res at 50 fps.... Some posted that maybe windows has reserved 4 gb of drive space for future updates, but why would both disk cleanup and storage sense both show that 4 gb as recoverable space then? No point as a picture won't tell you anymore than I posted. Maybe there is obscure patch or home brew software out there somewhere or MS just has just thrown together another crappy OS optimized only for 12th gen intel.....
 
You don't own your computer, Microsoft does. and they'll do as they damn well please.
Exactly! How dare you want to do something with your computer! Even if it was 10MB, if you want to delete a non-essential file, you should be able to.
 
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