Disk Cleanup doesn't clear Windows Update Cleanup

AddRAM · May 29, 2022

A Repair Install ?

The-Hive · May 29, 2022

AddRAM said:
I totally recommend using it. All you need is the free version. And you don`t have to use every option it gives you.

Download CCleaner | Clean, optimize & tune up your PC, free!

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I like it and use it, never had a problem but you get a few who say it's bad, I don't think they consider the fact is the problem is with them as it's easier to blame the program, after all thousands use it and they can't all be wrong

Bree · May 29, 2022

AddRAM said:
I totally recommend using it. All you need is the free version. And you don`t have to use every option it gives you.

I agree. But if you'd like an installer that comes without any bundled software offers then you want the CCLeaner Slim build, or (my preference) CCleaner Portable. It is identical in all repects except it stores its settings in a .ini file rather than the registry. Both available here....

CCleaner - Download Builds

Download the latest build of CCleaner for FREE. Clean your PC of temporary files, tracking cookies, browser junk and more!

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WXC · May 29, 2022

Bree said:
I agree. But if you'd like an installer that comes without any bundled software offers then you want the CCLeaner Slim build, or (my preference) CCleaner Portable. It is identical in all repects except it stores its settings in a .ini file rather than the registry. Both available here....

CCleaner - Download Builds

Download the latest build of CCleaner for FREE. Clean your PC of temporary files, tracking cookies, browser junk and more!

www.ccleaner.com

I agree.

Another vote for CCleaner Portable.

asturias7 · May 30, 2022

cineman195 said:
Can you please give me any reference as to how to do this, thanks

This will work with any build, you don't have to be using an Insider build.

UUP Dump - Download Windows Insider ISO

UUP Dump is the most practical and easy way to get ISO images of any Insider Windows 10 or Windows 11 version, as soon as Microsoft has released a new build. UUP Dump creates a download configuration file according to your choices, downloads necessary files directly from Microsoft servers, and...

www.elevenforum.com

archz2 · Feb 15, 2024

Bree said:
When Disk Clean Up cleans up Windows Update it's actually calling another process to do the cleaning. You can call that exact same process from the command line, where you can see in more detail what is going on.

Open a Command Prompt (Admin). Then use the following DISM commands (they may take some time to complete).

First, to see the current size of the component store, whether there are any reclaimable packages, and whether a clean up is recommended:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /AnalyzeComponentStore

Then, to clean up the component store:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup

After the clean up, check the size of the component store again. If all is working correctly it should have shrunk and any reclaimable packages removed.

If it has not shrunk, there are still reclaimable packages, or a clean up is still recommended, then your system is not working properly. I have seen a few cases where this has been reported, such as this Windows 10 one....

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...eclaimed/98c97f90-5396-4a84-a857-1bb465560657

The reported cure was an in-place repair install.

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

I have 4.23 GB of windows update cleanup files that aren't getting deleted by multiple methods. Disk cleanup being the first of them. I don't get any error message. Disk cleanup runs as usual but even after running the files still show up in the disk cleanup list.

I tried the following methods.

1. settings>storage>temporary files>windows update cleanup

2. DISM commands highlighted here.

3. Command prompts method given here.

hsehestedt said:
Give this a try (explanation follows) ...

1) Open a command prompt (does not need to be elevated).

2) Type in the command cleanmgr /d C: /sageset:65535

3) When Disk Cleanup opens, click the "Cleanup system files" button.

4) Check all boxes (unless there is something you specifically do NOT want to cleanup).

5) Click OK.

6) Run the command cleanmgr /sagerun:65535

Explanation: In the first 5 steps you are effectively just configuring Disk Cleanup and saving your preferences for what you want to cleanup. In order to get all available options you must specify the disk drive to which Windows is installed (/d C: in the above example), AND you need to select the "Cleanup system files" option.

The "/sageset:65535" simply tells Windows to save the configuration to the registry with a configuration number of 65535. Note that you can use any number from 1 to 65535. In this way, you can store multiple different configurations for Disk Cleanup.

The last command (step 6) simply runs Disk Cleanup with the configuration you saved as number 65535.

Now that this configuration is saved in the registry, from now on you can simply run the last command again and not have to select any checkboxes. This would be especially useful in a batch file to allow a single command to perform your specific cleanup tasks.

Give this a shot and see if it does what you want.

Please suggest a solution.

Bree · Feb 15, 2024

archz2 said:
I have 4.23 GB of windows update cleanup files that aren't getting deleted by multiple methods. Disk cleanup being the first of them. I don't get any error message. Disk cleanup runs as usual but even after running the files still show up in the disk cleanup list.

As I said at the bottom my post that you quoted, an in-place repair install has been reported as a cure for this.

Bree said:
If it has not shrunk, there are still reclaimable packages, or a clean up is still recommended, then your system is not working properly. I have seen a few cases where this has been reported, such as this Windows 10 one....

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...eclaimed/98c97f90-5396-4a84-a857-1bb465560657

The reported cure was an in-place repair install.

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

Winuser · Feb 15, 2024

idgat said:
Never a big fan of 3rd party disk/registry "cleaning" tools,

IMHO registry cleaners are only as dangerous as the user. One needs to go through everything the cleaner want to remove. I haven't used one in awhile but when I did I only allowed the reg cleaner to remove entries to programs I knew for sure that were no longer installed.

archz2 · Feb 18, 2024

Bree said:
As I said at the bottom my post that you quoted, an in-place repair install has been reported as a cure for this.

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

Sorry. I overlooked that part. Repair install fixed the issue. The update files weren't showing in the disk cleanup menu after I did the upgrade. Cleaning up a 20 GB old windows installation cleared up the space.
Thanks!

kelper · Feb 18, 2024

I had 3.7GB of Windows updates that Disk Clean-up could not delete. So I stopped the Windows Update service and looked in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Downloads. As well as the usual folders there were two files. One was well over 3GB and together they were 3.7GB.
I left the folders, which were all empty, and deleted the two files which had names like c22c1c9014ff74fe50a3b56196545243801cda1d76d323a3469d9e3d4c784250 with no extension.
This gave me back 3.7GB of space and Windows has been working fine for a few weeks now.
Then I restarted the Windows Update service.

Venom_ARC · Oct 15, 2024

I just got a new to me Asus machine that I did a clean install of windows 11. Installed great and all of the windows updates. A week later I went to do a disk clean and noticed I have 8.6GB stuck in the windows updates part. I have tried all of the methods and none work. I can run the command from the CMD and it shows it needs to be cleaned but refuses to. I tried repair method update install last night and that didn't work. Also apparently my system doesn't meet the windows requirement to get windows 11 even though it was running fine. I left it last night after trying the repair function under recovery and it was installing the 24H2 repair. Which is probably the same as iso method. Anything else I can do.

hsehestedt · Oct 15, 2024

Well, at least we now know with 100% certainty that this is only a reporting issue.

Bree · Oct 15, 2024

Venom_ARC said:
I just got a new to me Asus machine that I did a clean install of windows 11. Installed great and all of the windows updates. A week later I went to do a disk clean and noticed I have 8.6GB stuck in the windows updates part. I have tried all of the methods and none work. I can run the command from the CMD and it shows it needs to be cleaned but refuses to. I tried repair method update install last night and that didn't work.

Welcome to Eleven Forum.

We all see that on 24H2 build 26100.2033.

That 8.63GB is not really there. It's a bug in reporting, not a failure to clean. Hopefully there will be a fix next Patch Tuesday.

Microsoft said:
After using the Windows Disk Cleanup application, it may display an incorrect amount of disk space that can be freed up in the 'Windows Update Cleanup' category.

Please note this is a reporting error.... This inaccurate amount of disk space is reported even though the space was already freed in the initial run.

Next Steps: We are working on a resolution and will provide more information when it is available.

Windows 11, version 24H2 known issues and notifications

View announcements and review known issues and fixes for Windows 11, version 24H2

learn.microsoft.com

Venom_ARC said:
Also apparently my system doesn't meet the windows requirement to get windows 11 even though it was running fine. I left it last night after trying the repair function under recovery and it was installing the 24H2 repair. Which is probably the same as iso method. Anything else I can do.

Windows 11 will run fine on almost anything, I have 24H2 running on a 1st gen i5 with a legacy bios and an MBR install. Fill in your system specs at: https://www.elevenforum.com/account/system-specs so we can see it there's anything you could do to make it a supported device (like enabling TPM) or not (if it's an unsupported CPU).

Fabler2 · Oct 15, 2024

For some reason it's cleared on two machines for me.

Brink · Oct 15, 2024

Disk Cleanup might incorrectly report space available for cleanup
Despite cleaning up files, the application might display an incorrect estimate of space still available for cleanup

Known and Resolved issues for Windows 11 version 24H2

Windows message center: Current status as of January 21, 2025 Windows 11, version 24H2, also known as the Windows 11 2024 Update, is now broadly available. Starting this week, we are expanding this latest Windows version’s phased rollout. We are gradually offering this update also to...

www.elevenforum.com

andrew129260 · Oct 15, 2024

I experienced disk cleanup not working to clean certain things beforehand, and was told by a few people it is eventually on the chopping block and being decrepitated. The new settings panel under storage and temp files should be the way to remove and use disk cleanup going forward.

Bree · Oct 15, 2024

andrew129260 said:
I experienced disk cleanup not working to clean certain things beforehand, and was told by a few people it is eventually on the chopping block and being decrepitated. The new settings panel under storage and temp files should be the way to remove and use disk cleanup going forward.

If you look at Task Manager you'll see that whichever GUI you use to start cleaning up Windows Updates, it ends up running exactly the same processes. In it's most low-level form it's the command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

andrew129260 · Oct 15, 2024

Bree said:
If you look at Task Manager you'll see that whichever GUI you use to start cleaning up Windows Updates, it ends up running exactly the same processes. In it's most low-level form it's the command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

Wonder why disk cleanup doesn't work then on some machines (run as admin) and if I do the settings panel it does......weird....

I have experienced this even before 24H2

imanlien2020 · Oct 15, 2024

Samuria said:
You use storage space now more advanced than diskclean

Yes Disk Cleanup is being deprecated.

Marcus Vinicus · Oct 15, 2024

This issue isn't a showstopper for me.

1. It isn't causing crashes or other issues.
2. I don't need the 8.63GB because I'm running out of hard drive space.
3. MS are supposed to be working on a fix.

Disk Cleanup doesn't clear Windows Update Cleanup

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