Yesterday I installed the recently leaked RTM build of Windows 8.1 Spring Update 1 (Feature Pack) and was disappointed by the fact that my free space was considerably reduced after installing it. You may face a similar scenario and may not be able to reclaim all the disk space again just by running Disk Cleanup or CCleaner. So in this article, I would like to share with you a simple way of cleaning unneeded files from your hard drive after installing the latest Windows 8.1 updates.
My disk free space got reduced by approximately 7 GB. Windows 8.1 does not come with any special cleaning tool to do comprehensive cleanup, so I tried the built-in cleanmgr.exe tool (Disk Cleanup). It cleaned up approximately 900MB after doing Windows Update Cleanup so I was determined to get more free space back. Here's what I did:
- Open a command prompt as administrator (see how).
- Type the following command:
Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
- Delete all of the files from C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder. (They are files stored by Windows Update before updates are installed. After any update is installed, it is safe to clean up this folder).
- Reboot your PC
This can free up several GBs of disk space. This is similar to the way you clean up disk space after installing updates for Windows 7 but does a more comprehensive cleanup. The only downside to this is that you won't be able to uninstall the updates.
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Thanks sweetie. Can you uninstall updates from Windows 8 after this or is it only Windows 7?
You can’t uninstall updates because this command will clean up the updates cache
I got “Error: 14098 The component store has been corrupted.” after stuck at 7.2%, any idea please?
Please see the following article.
Now that the update has been released in disc cleanup build in windows you can remove the install files from there ^^
Thank you for this tip!
Really nice tip! Nowadays with expensive SSDs we need all the space back we can to make the use of SSD reasonable.
i got error: 740
elevated permissions are required to run DISM. Use an elevated command prompt to complete these tasks.
Use an elevated command prompt. Even this article has “see how” link.
https://winaero.com/blog/do-you-know-all-these-ways-to-open-an-elevated-command-prompt-in-windows/
My extra 12.7 GB of free space thanks you as do I.