Windows Temporary Files taking up large space

[Iggy Wolf]

My Windows 10 storage is showing that Temporary Files is taking up 22.7 GB of space. Thing is, when I go to check it, it only lets me clean up 2.2 GB of space. If the rest is the old WIndows build, it does NOT show it there, or in Disk Cleanup.

In fact, I can't find it anywhere on my PC, but my Temporary Files keeps growing and getting bigger, without the PC cleaning up the old files. How would I find the Windows.old folder and remove it?

[RGX12]

In the Disk Cleanup dialog, select "cleanup system files". From there you can choose to delete the old Windows backup files, along with some other items not available in the main Disk Cleanup window. You can also delete old restore points, if they exist.
Otherwise you can look for the Windows.old directory in the root of your system drive and delete it manually.

Furthermore, you may want to download a utility program like WinDirStat or TreeSize Free to show you a detailed view of everything taking up space on your drive, so you can really dig in for a deep (manual) cleaning.

[Iggy Wolf]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RGX12:

In the Disk Cleanup dialog, select "cleanup system files". From there you can choose to delete the old Windows backup files, along with some other items not available in the main Disk Cleanup window. You can also delete old restore points, if they exist.
Otherwise you can look for the Windows.old directory in the root of your system drive and delete it manually.

Furthermore, you may want to download a utility program like WinDirStat or TreeSize Free to show you a detailed view of everything taking up space on your drive, so you can really dig in for a deep (manual) cleaning.

Thanks. I know. It just didn't show even with system files. Personally, I think it's the new Windows 10 Build 1904 update. It downloaded it for me but I've yet to install it. They did say it'll take up 32GB of space, so maybe that's why it's in the Temporary Files, hanging there and taking up space until I choose to finally install it.

[RGX12]

Yes, that's possible. Just run the update tool and see what's pending. If a new update has been downloaded but not installed, it will be taking up space until it's either installed or manually deleted. You can check the contents of "%windir%\softwaredistribution\download" (the usual temporary location) to confirm.

P.S.: If you need the space now but don't want to perform any updates, just let me know and I'll post instructions on how to properly clear the pending update and delete the downloaded files.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

32gb free space is required for a new feature build, yes.

If don't want to install that now, pause Windows Updates for 7 days or more. Then reboot, run Disk Cleanup via the run as admin option and check all boxes and click ok to delete all of that junk temp data.

Put Win10 into Gaming Mode for now also to keep WU from checking or downloading.