M$ have (finally) included an option under 'Windows "Cleanup"' to remove old updates that are now redundant. Would be great to see this feature built into CCleaner.
Harry
Wow - neat stuff. I'll give this a +1 and meanwhile look into a winapp2.ini entry for it.
Edit: Looks like it's stuff in the winsxs folder after some cursory research, not really sure I'm comfortable messing with that. I'd say stick to using cleanmgr for now.
it's a pity cleanmgr doesn't let you expand the entry for Windows Update Clean-up to see what it actually will do to what files.
+1 if CC is able to do this.
Larry, welcome to the forum. That is a great idea, if someone can figure out how to make it work. Another +1 from me. Have you ever tried using that option? Let me share my experience with you and everyone else.
I bought this laptop in June, went through the first round of Windows updates, and ended up with about 55 updates in total. After several weeks, I discovered that feature and decided to try it. Windows informed me that I would gain back 2.8GB in disk space, so I thought why not? After the first 15 seconds or so, I heard my laptop's fan begin to spin up. And it just kept going faster and faster, until it was screaming, going faster than I ever heard before. I had the Speedfan utility running in system tray, and when I brought it up, I found my processors(4) running between 60 to 80 percent constantly. And their temperature was 75 to 80 degrees C - very hot in my opinion. And it was at that point I realized there was no going back. There is no way to stop the process, no way to pause or cancel it*. So I only hoped that it would be brief. WRONG! About two hours later, I finally heard the fan slow down. Then Windows went through several restarts and it was over. Later I visited AMD's website and found the absolute max for my processor is 95 degrees C, beyond that "your processor may be permanently damaged".
So Windows 8 came very close to killing my 3 week old machine with that wonderful little feature. It probably shortened it's life to some degree. In retrospect, I should have just lived with the extra 2.8GB on my drive.
*You might try stopping it via Task Manger - but I don't even want to think about the chaos you would create in the filesystem; you'd probably end up re-installing Windows by doing so.
I tried the option this afternoon. Fully patched win7 x64 (less bing desktop / bar / mse, assorted other ms junk) and it removed 4.28Gb (edit: From my 60gb ssd which was nice!)
@Derek: It's now an option on windows 7 as of this patch tues. - I had no problems running it I'd imagine if you'd've just killed cleanmgr it'd've just stopped deleting stuff - if you were lucky.
OT: hooray for those double contractions
I'd imagine if you'd've just killed cleanmgr it'd've just stopped deleting stuff - if you were lucky.
OT: hooray for those double contractions
But that's my problem, Winapp2. When it comes to computers, I have no luck at all.
Info on the update here
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2852386/en-us
More info (with graphics!)
http://www.ghacks.net/2013/10/09/save-lots-disk-space-microsofts-new-windows-update-cleanup-tool/
(this update is integrated into Windows 8.1)
Nice find and nice idea. It works under W7_X64 too. It can get rid of almost 3GB for me. Yay!
It's just got rid of 6GB for me on Win 7 64bit
(*note to self...)
always remember to check the status of my laptop battery before doing something like this.
It would have avoided the situation where when you rebooted to finish the cleanup, the laptop died.
It would have avoided the troubleshooting and hairpulling until you tried plugging in power lead.
It would have avoided then being stuck on ''configuring'' 35%
It would have avoided needing to boot into safe mode so Windows could finish job without getting 'stressed'
However job done, now have 6GB more.
Going for a lie down!!
This could be an exciting experience
I mean that in the worst possible way
I think I read an article last year that Windows 7 updates prior to SP1 would remain resident in WinSXS even though they were not needed,
but there was a manual technique (possibly involving some tool) of removing them.
I obtained the impression that removing subsequent updates would be at my own risk.
Will using this new option in "Windows Cleanup" similarly be at my own risk ?
Alan life is at your own risk.
Just get them deleted and live a bit!!
Unless a user is seriously short of Disk space I see no reason to remove them as they pose no threat.
Yeah, 1-6gb is probably no big deal for someone with a larger drive, but this is pretty nice for smaller SSDs or even people running on smaller hdds (we put win7 on ~80gb drives sometimes in the shop)
Just tried it on my Win7 x64 laptop. Said there was 6.31GB to remove, so I did. I ran Cleanup again and there was still 2.04GB left. I ran it a 2nd time but the 2.04GB remains!?!
Maybe by stating it removes "old" updates, the "new" updates are intentionally left... until they become "old"
I had to restart for the changes to take effect
That update doesn't apply to WinXP, however my WinSxS folder only has this amount:
84.7 MB (88,852,015 bytes)
I was experimenting with this yesterday and was gonna post a thread on it. I think the winsxs reference is a dud (I found similar comment that it was emptying that folder), as running that cleanup option cleared 3Gb of files but my winsxs folder was unchanged (I did try to track the changes but didn't realise the files were removed during a restart so I failed in that regard)
I think it's definitely winsxs related, i looked into it before I ran it..
#files in C:\Windows\winSXS before running: 77,016
#files after: 64,612
I think it's definitely winsxs related, i looked into it before I ran it..
#files in C:\Windows\winSXS before running: 77,016
#files after: 64,612
But there certainly wasn't 3gb of files gone from my winsxs folder
Beware messing with the Winsxs folder. There are lot of NTFS hardlinks or whatever they are called there (NTFS symbolic links). It's difficult to report the real size.
As for some people saying getting rid of a few Gigabytes isn't particularly noticeable, it is for me, specially when doing a patition backup.