Windows Update & Missing GBs

doodah

doodah

doodah

Caporegime
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Just did a windows update - accidentally selected all optional updates (35 in total) and then realised it came to just under 3Gb. Stopped and now 3Gb has disappeared from my system drive. Tried disk cleanup (special one shown in Windows 64bit thread) and still hasnt given me back the 3Gb. Anyone know how to get the 3Gb back?
 
dbappa said:
Stopped like 1 minute into it after realising it totalted to 3Gb (500mb daily limit at my uni :o)
Click to expand...

Hey dbappa, as knowledge123 has already said, it could well be a system restore point thats taking up some of your disk space. First try the "Reduce System Restore disk usage" (Below) and then clean up all of your restore points. (If you are not worried about them)

Fire Wizard said:
Reduce System Restore disk usage:

By default Windows Vista allocates 15% of your hard drive to storing System Restore points - which turns out to be a couple dozen gigabytes on a large drive. The user-friendly Windows XP slider bar which sets System Restore space has disappeared on Vista; instead a little command line action's required to reset this percentage.

To recover some of that System Restore disk space, start up Vista's command line with adminstrative rights, and type, vssadmin list shadowstorage to see the current allocation. To change it, use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

So this is what i use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

This will limit the System Restore's drive footprint to 2GB, also remember though this limits how far back it can store points, so do so carefully.
Click to expand...

Once you have done that type in Disk Cleanup into the start menu search bar and tap enter. Once the Disk Cleanup window has popped up, select the More Options tab and then under "System Restore and Shadow Copies" select the Clean up option and then delete.

Then go back to the Disk Cleanup tab and select which files files you would like to delete and click ok and then delete files. :)
 
System restore was off, turned on and then deleted shadow copies and then turned back off - still 3Gb missing.
 
Hey dbappa, the only thing i can currently think of at the moment is to run the disk defragmenter utility and then once it has completed run disk cleanup again. :) Sorry im not quite sure where exactly your 3GB of hard drive space has gone. :(
 
Tried that and no luck. Looked at update again and it must be the language packs that have taken most of the 3Gb.
 
Try this if you want to! click start and type %temp% and press enter. Delete the contents of the folder, not the folder. You may find some stuff will not be allowed to be deleted, but this should free some space.
 
55 items, most deleted but only equated to a few MB. Remaining files wouldnt delete and were only 1mb or so in total.
 
Have you got any folders(some times in blue writing) called $NtUninstall
It in the windows folder.

Its for just incase you want to uninstall the updates.
Also in CCleaner tick the Hotfix Uninstaller. But beware you wont be able to uninstall updates.
 
deuse said:
Have you got any folders(some times in blue writing) called $NtUninstall
It in the windows folder.

Its for just incase you want to uninstall the updates.
Also in CCleaner tick the Hotfix Uninstaller. But beware you wont be able to uninstall updates.
Click to expand...

Couldn't find the folder. Might try CCleaner thing, never needed to uninstall updates before....
 
Bingo, think i have found the missing 3Gbs. Used a program called Sequoia View (very handy!) and did a filter search for files around couple of hundred MB. Found a folder called C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download with loads of folders called e.g. d3b66c0af135a7530a53588b385f4194

Added up all the large files in the Download folder and it came to 2957MB. One of the files is called BIT9EE2.tmp (225Mb). Could this be the cancelled windows updates language files?
 
The \WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download directory contains the actual hotfixes downloaded by WinUpdate. So yes, you can delete the contents of the downloads directory without issue, if you ever need them again Windows Update will just download them again.
 
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