How to Delete Windows 10 Update Files and Cached Data?

How to delete downloaded Windows 10 Update files Correctly

Remove or delete Windows 10 update files will free the system drive space and speed up your PC too. When you update your Windows, the update files will be cached on your Windows system drive. You must manually delete Windows 10 update files or use some third-party application. The built-in Disk Cleanup’s of Windows feature is great for deleting Windows temporary files. But for deleting Windows 10 update files, you can use the Windows 10 installed Update section.

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This is the most common problem user asked us about. Unless we had explained for previews Windows, like Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. Fortunately, it works the same for all Windows. So try to clean up your system temporary files to speed up the performance of your computer, specialty Windows 10.

Delete Windows 10 Update Files

There are two ways to delete Windows 10 update files. The first one is deleting from Windows update an installed update file which sometimes causes the issue. The second is delete the update cached files in Windows 10 using disk cleanup.

Delete Windows 10 update files and temporarily cached files:

1. Check Windows 10 Update files.
2. Delete an installed update file.
3. Remove Windows 10 temporary files.
4. Cleanup Windows 10 with Disk Cleanup

Follow the below step by step guide to delete Windows 10 update files, temporary files, and other cached files. Let’s begin with uninstalling an update file.

1. Press Windows+R to open the Run and type “appwiz.cpl” on the Windows Run to open Program and Features. On the programs and feature page, select View installed updates.

Delete Windows 10 Update Files and Temporary Cached Files – Technig

2. To delete an installed update, select and right click the installed update you want to uninstall, then click Uninstall.

Note: Some Windows updates are not removable, you can’t simply uninstall it with Windows Programs and Features section.

Remove Windows Update Files and Cached Data

This is the second method to delete Windows update files and other cached data or temporary files. Just follow up the below guide.

1. Open your File Explorer (This PC or My Computer). Right-click the Windows system drive and click Properties to open the Local Disk (x) Properties. The system drive is where your Windows 10 has been installed currently.

Windows 10 System Drive Properties – Technig

2. On the Properties of the system drive, click Disk Cleanup to open Disk Cleanup for the drive (C:). Then select all from Download Program files to Thumbnail files under Files to delete. When you have selected all of them, click Clean up system files.

Delete Windows 10 Update Files

3. Now on the Disk Cleanup tab, select all options again, then click OK to delete all Windows 10 update files and temporary files.

If you want to delete System Restore and Shadow Copies, select More Options tab and click Clean up to remove system restore and shadow copies.

Delete Windows 10 System Restore and Shadow Copies

Remember: This action will remove all system restore point, you will not be able to restore to preview point unless the system will create a new restore point.

4. Just click Delete Files to make sure that all files will remove successfully. Until it will not finish, don’t close the process window or shutting down your system.

Are you sure you want to permanently delete the files

5. Now all Windows 10 update files and other cached files must be deleted. Close the System Properties window.

That’s it, easy and simple.

To do the same task or need to more about deleting system cached files or remove Windows update files, I recommend you to read the below articles.

How to delete downloaded Windows Update files

This is the manual task you can do to delete downloaded Windows update files. It is easy to delete all cached update files. This works on all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

How to delete downloaded Windows 10 Update files – Technig

1. Open the Run.
2. Type services.msc.
3. Right-click on the result, and select “run as administrator” from the context menu.
4. Locate the Service Windows Update. The services listing is sorted alphabetically by default. Click on the name to revert the order so that you don’t need to scroll as much.
5. Right-click on the service Windows Update and select Stop from the menu.
6. Go to C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download using Explorer or any third-party file browser. If you navigate to the folder manually, you may need to enable the showing of hidden files first.
   1. Do so with a click on File > Change folder and search options.
   2. Go to View, and scroll down until you find “Hidden files and folders” listed.
   3. Select “Show hidden files, folders and drives”.
   4. Remove the checkmark from “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)”.
   5. Click Apply, then OK.
7. Select all files of the folder. The easiest way to do that is to use Ctrl-A while the folder is active.
8. Hit the Delete-key on the computer keyboard.
9. Windows may need administrator privileges to delete certain files. Select “do this for all current items” and click continues to grant the permissions.
10. Go back to the Services window.
11. Right-click on the Windows Update service, and select Start from the list of options.

Cleanup Windows 10 with third-party Software

PC Scan & Repair by Reimage software is also a good tool to completely scan and repair your computer. Download and install it then start scanning. The below screenshot is the scan result’s of my Laptop.

PC Scan & Repair by Reimage

Also, there are more third party apps will do this for your, but doing Windows task with built-in Windows app is better and free. It will let you discover your computer features and functions more.

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How to delete downloaded Windows Update files

Windows Update works for the most part pretty reliable. It is an automated system of Microsoft’s Windows operating system that handles the downloading and installing of updates for the operating system.

At best, it is a silent service that runs in the background; it may ask you to restart the PC every now and then though as that is still required for many updates, and it sometimes may do so without user interaction.

When you run into issues though with updates, you may spend hours or even days figuring out what is going wrong.

I cannot update one of my PCs to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update for instance because of a bluescreen that I get whenever I try to do so.

One of the things that you can try when it comes to updates, is to delete downloaded Windows Update files to start over.

If you suspect that something is wrong with the files, or if you want Windows Update to run a new check for updates to download new versions of updates that were released by Microsoft, then you may find the following tip useful for that.

If you run Windows Insider builds on a PC for instance, you may skip an already downloaded update to a new build to download a newer build and avoid having to update the system multiple times.

How to delete downloaded Windows Update files

It is thankfully pretty easy to delete all cached update files. This works on all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

1. Open the Start Menu (tap on the Windows-key or click on it).
2. Type services.msc.
3. Right-click on the result, and select «run as administrator» from the context menu.
4. Locate the Service Windows Update. The services listing is sorted alphabetically by default. Click on name to revert the order so that you don’t need to scroll as much.
5. Right-click on the service Windows Update and select Stop from the menu.
6. Go to C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download using Explorer or any third-party file browser. If you navigate to the folder manually, you may need to enable the showing of hidden files first.
   1. Do so with a click on File > Change folder and search options.
   2. Go to View, and scroll down until you find «Hidden files and folders» listed.
   3. Select «Show hidden files, folders and drives».
   4. Remove the checkmark from «Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)».
   5. Click Apply, then OK.
7. Select all files of the folder. The easiest way to do that is to use Ctrl-A while the folder is active.
8. Hit the Delete-key on the computer keyboard.
9. Windows may need administrator privileges to delete certain files. Select «do this for all current items» and click continue to grant the permissions.
10. Go back to the Services window.
11. Right-click on the Windows Update service, and select Start from the list of options.

You can re-run a check for updates once all files have been deleted. Please note that Windows Update will download all updates anew when you clear the update cache. This can lead to Gigabyte large downloads.

Clear the Windows Update cache from the command line

You may purge the Windows Update cache from the command line as well. While you can type the following commands on an elevated command prompt manually, you may create a small batch file as well toautomate the process.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Tap on the Windows-key to bring up the Start Menu.
2. Type cmd.exe.
3. Hold down the Shift-key and the Ctrl-Key before you select the cmd.exe result. This opens an elevated command prompt.
4. Accept the UAC prompt that Windows displays.
5. Run the following commands and hit enter after each line:
   1. net stop wuauserv
   2. cd %Windir%\SoftwareDistribution
   3. del /f /s /q Download
   4. net start wuauserv

The commands explained:

• net stop wuauserv — This stops the Windows Update service.
• cd %Windir%\SoftwareDistribution — Switches to the SoftwareDistribution directory of the Windows installation.
• del /f /s /q Download — Deletes the Download folder of the SoftwareDistribution directory with
  • /f — force the removal of read-only files.
  • /s — include files in subdirectories.
  • /q — in quiet mode to surpress prompts.
• net start wuauserv — Starts the Windows Update service.

We have uploaded a batch file to our own server which you may run to execute the commands automatically. You need to right-click on the file and select «run as administrator» as it requires administrative privileges.

You can download the file with a click on the following link: clear-windows-update-cache.zip

Note that it is supplied as an archive that you do need to extract before you may run it.

Tip: Check out these Windows Update related articles and guides

can i delete windows update folder after updating windows 7 ?

Replies (7) 

which windows update folder and how does this pertain to microsoft security essentials functionality? [1]

is system restore functioning properly now or. ?

[1] A Moderator has moved your thread from the Microsoft Security Essentials forum to the Win7-specific Windows Update forum.

Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
Microsoft MVP (Windows Client) since October 2002

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which windows update folder and how does this pertain to microsoft security essentials functionality? [1]

is system restore functioning properly now or. ?

[1] A Moderator has moved your thread from the Microsoft Security Essentials forum to the Win7-specific Windows Update forum.

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when windows 7 update automatically then stored folder is too large.

what «stored folder?»

Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
Microsoft MVP (Windows Client) since October 2002

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You can rename Windows Software Distribution Folder. It will recreate itself.

Start > Type CMD

Right click on CMD and select Run As Administrator

Before your rename the folder you must stop the Windows Update service. Here is how:

• type net stop wuauserv and press enter
• type rename c:\windows\SoftwareDistribution to softwaredistribution.oldand press enter
• type net start wuauserv and press enter
• type exitand press enter

Once you restarted Windows Update service, go back and verify the new folder was created