Delete files in softwaredistribution download folder

Others have already summed up your "contributions" nicely above, and since my personal experience with your "advise" coming from the WSUS language packs thread - pretty much exactly mirrors what others have observed on this one - nothing more to add here, sir.

Have a nice day. Found this site when looking for folders i can empty in google. I found it quite interesting to follow you. But noone could say how it will affect the system. After the discussion about WinSXS the idea came up to look in the registry if anything does refer to any of the content in there Im just a regmanipulating nerd.

Since i am kid i love to check and manipulate all the files with systeminformation in it, to tune up system manually, free space, as it was in old times with ms dos freeing space in the kb base memory Well, let's hope you're not a financial advisor. I had to read it again to make sure you really said "condescending" in one breath and "switch to Mac" in the next.

Garvin The views expressed on this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of SolarWinds. The Windows folder takes up 7. You need to recognize that your personal experience does not reflect the personal experience of everyone else.

Thank you for the information that Download content over 10 days old can safely be deleted regardless of whether it is aesthetically pleasing ; I will proceed to do so. I have a few servers running Windows Server and they are all experiencing greatly diminished disk space in the system partition. I checked the SoftwareDistribution folder on one server and it's topping 2.

The Download subfolder contains files dating back to when the server was new. Are you certain this folder is automatically maintained? The system partition is down to 1. Needless to say, but I will be manually cleaning up the Download folder. The design is for the folder to be automatically maintained. However, it's not unheard of for the datastore to get out of sync with the content cache.

As noted previously, anything older than 10 days can be deleted. Following that you should monitor the folder to see if subsequent files get deleted as they should.

If they don't, the datastore may have inconsistencies. An option in this case is to rebuild the datastore. Rename the SoftwareDistribution folder. Copy the old ReportingEvents.

Not really sure where you stopped reading, since you didn't quote the message you're actually responding to But never make the mistake of confusing "arrogance" with accuracy, or the right to aggressively defend one's beliefs in those facts. True, perhaps you don't like the confidence with which I chose to make my points.

I accept that. As for "without any explanation" My take was that I explained the basic points several times over. If you feel there's something lacking in any of the above responses, I'm most happy to expand on the subject. I'm blown away by the arrogance of your "answers. To speak in such absolutes without any explanation as to why makes me want to argue with you just because of your arrogance. I have come across this thread a few times or a similar one with Lawrence stating that it is just wrong to mess with that folder and can usually only get about posts down.

As a consultant, I see a number of servers and I need to check my memory each time because I have seen so much.

I have had a couple of servers with a 12 GB C: drive. A lot of these files could be up to 4 years old. I have not had access to these servers previously, and I am looking to replace these servers as soon as possible, but when the C: drive drops to a couple hundred MB, the server is in danger of crashing due to space issues. These have been servers that for the most part, no one was doing updates on a regular basis. It is not until pretty low in the exchange that you mention that it is possible that there may be a reason to move or delete the files.

It is not the most helpful of responses. I understand that you want to stress the fact that it should not be done, and I can appreciate that. But if you could stress that and then explain early in, that there may be some rare situations that it could be used, it could make for a better read. I have come across this thread a few times or a similar one with Lawrence stating that it is just wrong to mess with that folder.

Then monitor the client to see if it continues to properly self-maintain the folder thereafter. One other note Of course, it's also worth noting that any server with only a 12GB system partition was already in trouble the day the operating system was installed onto it. In that case, you must also focus on other space consuming resources, because you still need another 2GB of free space beyond that.

People don't arbitrarily decide to go delete random folders from their systems, they're looking for answers to this question for a specific reason. Per Mr. Garvin's own posting, if the SoftwareDistribution folder has grown large and contains old content, then by definition it's NOT a properly functioning system, so all the sturm und drang over whether it's a best practice for a properly working system is irrelevant.

I think the question here is the proper methodology to diagnose and remediate that not-working system. There's no harm in compressing the folder So I have read this post from top to bottom and agree with most things that were said. With that said though, you always talk about an update agent being corrupt or the datastore being corrupt and not really giving any troubleshooting steps to fix either of them.

I work for a small company working on servers that are way beyond there retiring age but have to because we just can't spend the money every other year to replace them.

I have gone through about 6 of my servers now and everyone of them have the downloads folder with updates going back several years. So I have been deleting the ones that are several years old and leaving the most current one. I get updates all the time and rarely do have ones that are failing. So I am not sure why the files are getting so big. These servers were all built with 10GB max as the OS drive because that was all that was recommended at the time.

With the select few that i have virtualized, i have been able to give extra space to the OS partition. The ones that I have not done is because the are mission critical and need to be up at all times.

I also understand that this is for IT Pros, but to talk to other professionals as if they were below you gets you little to no respect. I almost started skipping the post that you made because of the comments that you made and the lack of humility that you have. Show a little respect for some IT pros that are looking for answers, instead of just being told NO.

There are doctors that might be able to help take that claw out. And if you still feel strongly about being c ondescending for those asking questions. Find a new line of work were no one asks you questions!! Fair enough, Brad, but to be honest, there really aren't any "troubleshooting steps" per se.

There are a couple of symptoms that will appear in a WindowsUpdate. There's not a lot of information available about how the WUA actually works internally, or how it should work.

Most of what we know is based on several years of empirical observations. One observation that applies is that once the datastore and download cache get out of sync, the housekeeping routines don't delete anything. Deleting the files older than 10 days usually will restore normal functionality of that housekeeping task. If it doesn't, and space is that critical, you might also find it beneficial to rebuild the entire datastore. I had already done your 4 straightforward steps - except 4b 'restoring the log file'.

I did a simple Copy of that log file kb to the Desktop which appeared to work, but all of my attempts to restore it with a simple Paste described above refuse to work. If so, will the log file I had already copied with a simple Copy to the Desktop still work with your 2nd command? If it freaks out, it could be that the WUA has the file locked.

Stop the WindowsUpdate service, copy the logfile back, and restart the service. What an interesting read. It took only three years of discussion for an actual answer with actual instructions to be posted. For the great length of this thread, instead of helpful information, there are accusations of you should know better of course, if everyone knew better, these forums would be superfluous , such as :.

Such a reference would have been useful, but you don't actually provide one. Later in the thread, you contradict yourself and indicate that such a primer does not actually exist:. Back in , when these systems were installed, it wasn't unreasonable to consider that to be more than sufficient for an OS, with room to grow. Mostly I am talking about systems belonging to small businesses with no WSUS, just automatic updates direct from MS and reboots once every blue moon or so.

Under these conditions, in my experience a Software Distribution that self-polices itself is a rarity. Having read through the majority of this thread, it is still a mystery to me how to determine if the datastore and the downloads folder are out of sync, or where the magic number of older than 10 days comes from. Other than a self appointed expert who admits he doesn't have a lot of information about how WUA actually works says so.

Irrespective of anything said in the debate above, empirical testing certainly reveals that there are times when the only viable solution for the layman IT Administrator, will be the removal or re-naming of the SoftwareDistribution folder. With that said, scheduling the removal of the folder does seem pretty extreme.

We run Win 7 VDI desktops over here with very tight disk space requirements, and we've never seen a problem that suggests we should consider that. We now look at this step as a viable and reasonable solution when specific problems such as the one described by that post occur from time to time.

Which in most environments would hopefully be quite irregular, rather than the norm. I have resolved the issue through more normal means but I am nonetheless curious why clearing SD folder did not resolve the issue as it would normally inside Windows.

It went a bit crazy downloading 11 copies of the same patch wacserver-x-none. It really shouldn't be beyond the Microsoft engineers to copy the unix guys with a real or virtual temp partition that can be wiped at the whim of the IT maintainers. Is it NOW okay to clean up the mess? If not, then when? If the answer is never, then I can see why MS isn't doing so well anymore Not always best practice is to put head under the sand, leaving bad project decisions arrive to behave like a malware May be this folder is usefull Space is never taken in account inside Windows That's nothing.

These CU's are now 1GB in size. I've found SoftwareDistribution folders over 6GB in size because updates are just stuck in there. Try 11GB. It's been there for more than 6 months! I'm deleting right now. I don't need to "revert" windows update more than 4 updates. Because if something happens that I need more than that, I'll throw windows out of the window!

I have patience, but just like my disk drive space, it has limits. Yet that's exactly what you were doing in writing your post. However, I did find value in Jedi's post and thought it was appropriate and well stated. Nothing like being a hypocrite while attacking others who identify those posting condescending answers Office Office Exchange Server.

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Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. Answered by:. Archived Forums. Sign in to vote. I usually address this by: Stopping the Automatic Updates service.

Restarting the Automatic Updates service. Thanks in advance for your input. Monday, August 22, PM. I am not aware of a 'best practice' way of reducing the size of the folder The 'best practice' is to never touch the folder.

Any continued issues is evidence of a more serious client health issue. Changed "30 days" to "10 days". Tuesday, August 23, AM. Saturday, June 2, PM. If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer". Any questions? Tuesday, August 23, PM. The current size of the SoftwareDistribution folder is MB. So here are my questions: 1. Thanks, -Rob. However, recovering a few hundred megabytes of space from the WUAgent is like using an eyedropper to fill a bucket.

It is evidence that some content has been abandoned. Evidence that a current fault exists would be confirmed by content that is between days old.

If the July Patch Tuesday content is still there, or if the August Patch Tuesday content was installed before the 13th and is still there, that would suggest that the WUAgent is not maintaining the current content. Delete the content older than 10 days and monitor the folder. Other than being absolutely unnecessary? Hard to say. If you NEVER need to refer to that Update History, then the downsides are nil; however, if you destroy information you might need at a later time to troubleshoot some other issue, you can't use what you don't have.

I typically remove mine days after update installation, as by that point, either the update is working in which case the installation log and uninstallation folder has no real value , or it's already failed. Not Declined update, it is retained in the DataStore. If an installed update gets uninstalled, and that update is not in the DataStore, how would the WUAgent know that the update was, once again, needed?

It's really a moot point, though, as you cannot control this. The WUAgent caches update metadata for all relevant updates. That is one of the primary purposes of the DataStore, along with the installation history for those updates. If you destroy the DataStore, the cache for hundreds, if not thousands of updates must be rebuilt; the installation history cannot be rebuilt. Thank you Rich. This is exactly the information I was looking for as I have an XP system, in service since November The SoftwareDistribution directory is 1.

While I do have plenty of free space, I generally dislike bloat when it can be trimmed. Tuesday, November 8, PM. Any guidence on where to go next once the server fills up again? Monday, November 14, PM. The WinSXS can be safely deleted. The large caveat to this is that you are deleting the backup files for Windows Updates and Service Packs.

If you delete them, you will be unable to roll back updates. Tuesday, November 15, AM. If you have other tricks like that, I would like to know.

You definitivly are earing our call lol. Friday, November 18, PM. This happens because windows update lets you select updates that are part of other updates. These smaller updates later fail to install because they no longer apply. Sunday, November 20, PM. Edited by t0lkien Monday, January 16, AM. Monday, January 16, AM. My install is exactly 2 days old A couple of questions here: Did you install a base image of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 released Spring , or did you install a base image of Windows 7 RTM released Fall Monday, January 16, PM.

Adam J. Friday, February 3, PM. But this conversation is not about network utilization, it's about DISK utilization. Saturday, February 11, AM. And gasoline is not cheap for the owner of a Maserati, either, but I have little sympathy for their economic woes, as well. Sunday, February 12, AM.

Regards Simon. Wednesday, February 15, PM. Thursday, February 16, AM. Garvin Mr. Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha L. Monday, February 20, AM. In most of the cases, when Windows Update stops working properly on your device and you are getting an error message, you need to flush out this folder to solve the problem.

Moreover, if you find that this folder is accumulating a large chunk of data taking more space of the drive, you can manually clear out the folder to free up some space on your drive. However, if you face Windows Update issues such as Windows Update not working , Windows Updates fails , Windows Update stuck while downloading the latest updates , etc.

It is completely safe to delete this folder. However, you need to first make sure that you are experiencing a problem with your Windows Update. Next time when Windows Update files are ready, Windows will automatically create this folder and download the update files from the scratch.

Make sure to create a restore point just in case something goes wrong. Now you need to navigate to SoftwareDistribution folder in C drive to delete all its components:. If you are not able to delete all files because some files are in use, you just need to restart your device. Upon rebooting, you need to again run the above commands again and follow the steps. Now, again try to delete all the content of the SoftwareDistribution folder. Once you have deleted the content of the SoftwareDistribution folder, you need to type the following command to activate the services related to Windows Update:.

Right-click on Windows Update service and select Stop. Delete all the files and folders under SoftwareDistribution folder. Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users.

It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. One of our Windows servers has a fairly small C-partition, which is approaching full. I think this folder is used as a temporary storage for Windows Update, but as all the pending Windows updates have now been installed, is it OK to delete the contents of this folder? As Zab said, stop the Update Service while you clean up the folder.

Harry reports problem with people who deleted the directories, as opposed to people who deleted files in directory. If I were you I'd run the Microsoft Disk Cleanup wizard and see if it proposes deleting this directory. If it doesn't do that, then I wouldn't touch it. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

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