Windows 11 Disk Cleanup will not Remove Windows Update Cleanup

Anonymous
2022-05-16T16:04:16+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-05-30T16:16:07+00:00

    No solutions yet, but I have continued to work on this.

    I ran "dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore" and received the following results:

    I then ran "dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup"

    I noted that this seem to complete after only 20%.

    I then reran the analysis command:

    Note that there is no change from before running the cleanup. I don't know if this is related to the update cleanup problem, but it just doesn't look right. Any comments on why this is or why I'm not even in the ballpark are greatly appreciated.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-05-25T16:27:38+00:00

    I did the same thing with the same results except that I used the Settings-System-Storage option this time. It still shows that I have 1.93 GB of Windows Updates to remove, but it showed over 2 GB before I ran it. I checked disk space before and after running it and I did recover around 2 GB in disk space, so I'm pretty much coming to the conclusion that this is more of a reporting problem than a removal problem.

    This computer is showing about 10 GB more disk usage than I think it should be compared to the other computers on the network (which to a great degree are set up to mirror one another), so there is still something strange happening somewhere. I just haven't figured out where as of yet.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-05-25T12:18:32+00:00

    Just as update, I installed 2022-05 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 for x64-based Systems (KB5014019) and following reboot, ran disk cleanup. The Windows Upgrade files of almost 2GB were deleted but the 2.1 GB in Windows Update Cleanup are still listed. Like you, my gut says the files are really not there and that its a reporting issue. And also like you, no way I would even consider an O/S reinstall for this.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-05-24T03:18:36+00:00

    Stan, sorry to hear that, but at least it tells me that I am not alone on this. It might be that many have not yet run Disk Cleaner since whatever changed or didn't notice the failure of the Windows Update Cleaner.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-05-24T02:25:34+00:00

    Unfortunately, I had missed the problem until after I had pruned my restore points. I also tried a restore from image backups that I had made with NovaStor, but those weren't old enough either. Apparently, this had been around more than 30 days before I found it.

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