Windows 11 Disk Cleanup will not Remove Windows Update Cleanup

I recently ran disk cleanup on Windows 11 Pro to clear about 2 gig of Windows Update files. This has always worked in the past, but, now, it acts like it's working except that the process moves much too quickly compared to how it used to work. If I run it again, it says that the same amount of space is still present and available to be deleted.

I have tried all of the posted (here, in Microsoft docs, and elsewhere on the net) to try to resolve this issue, but nothing has worked. Those include renaming the Software distribution folder, rebooting and removing the old one, checking services to make sure the proper ones are running, running SFC and DISM and going through the Microsoft published process of manually resetting the Windows Update and cleanup systems.

I have a four computer peer to peer network. Three computers are on Windows 11 and one on Windows 10. The Windows 10 computer is working properly, but all three of the Windows 11 machines are exhibiting this problem. Is this something that Microsoft is aware of or is it a temporary thing because of the problems with the recent updates?

Any suggestions are welcome, but I have tried all of the things previously posted about this problem. Thanks.

Hi. I am having this issue too and have a partial work around. Deleteing shadow copies. In doing so, the space is made available, but windows update cleanup doesnt show it. I had 6.12 total temp files that supposedly can be removed, as well as after. However, my c: drive went from 263 gb free, to 271 gb free. To proceed with this, open an admin command prompt and type "vssadmin delete shadows /all" without quotes, press enter and type Y when prompted whether to proceed.

Interesting. Many of us here determined that the space was indeed freed, but that Disk Cleanup did not acknowledge it (nor did the storage cleanup in Settings). On two of my affected machines, the problem was resolved when I did a repair installation of Windows 11 to resolve a different problem. Interestingly enough, the third machine still exhibits this problem even after the repair installation, though the disk space is not being used as Disk Cleanup and Settings-System-Storage indicate.

There is a problem somewhere, but apparently it is a reporting problem and not a functional problem.

My Windows 11 Pro is up to 6.10 GB of reported Windows Update Clean-up which is uncleanupable.

Figure seems to constantly growing despite multiple attempts at cleanup over time, the last time I looked at it was 5.90 GB from memory. Whether all that data is really there or just a reporting error I have no idea, I will probably just wait for the 22H2 release later this year and see if that fixes it.

My Windows 11 Pro is up to 6.10 GB of reported Windows Update Clean-up which is uncleanupable.

Figure seems to constantly growing despite multiple attempts at cleanup over time, the last time I looked at it was 5.90 GB from memory. Whether all that data is really there or just a reporting error I have no idea, I will probably just wait for the 22H2 release later this year and see if that fixes it.

Mine were doing the same thing before the repair reinstall of Win 11. However, you can check this out the next time you get an update in by checking the size of the disk after installation of the update but before running Disk Cleanup and then checking the size after running Disk Cleanup. I noticed a significant drop in disk usage after disk cleaning that was not reflected in the Disk Cleanup information.

The repair installation was done to resolve another problem (the May, June and July updates not installing), but it also remedied this problem on two of my three Win 11 computers. The third one still reports an inordinate use of space for the update files, though the usage of the hard drive still drops about the expected amount when Disk Cleanup is run. It seems to be an irritant, but not a significant problem. However, I feel the same way about my computers as I do about my cars where I want working oil pressure, temperature and volt meters because I want to know what's going on. Microsoft, over the years, has done its best to keep the user from knowing what is going on.

I have the same exact problem, after spending multiple hours using multiple disk images which I back up once a week and keep four weeks of there are actually two updates that cause this issue. I installed the updates in a different order and went from 2.3GB in update cleanup not wanting to "clean" to only 373MB. The two updates that cause this issue are.

Same here. Windows Update Cleanup refuses to clean 373 MB. I do hope this will soon be fixed.