Windows 11 Disk Cleanup will not Remove Windows Update Cleanup

Hi

Welcome to the Microsoft community.

What is the C disk space of your three windows 11 computers? Is it possible that the system cannot allocate extra space due to insufficient space.

By the way, you can delete the anti-virus software in your computer. The anti-virus software may also cause many redundant spaces to be deleted in time.

Looking forward to your good news.

You are welcome to reply to this topic, and I sincerely thank you for your support of Microsoft products and services.

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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* Please check and vote this answer if it helps as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.

Computer 1 has 648 GB available on C:, .99 GB on D: and 3.09 TB on F:. E: is a BD drive.

Computer 2 has 641 GB on C:, 867 GB on D: and 1.30 TB on F: E: is not present.

Computer 3 has 651 GB on C:, 753 GB on D: and 3.12 on F:. E: is a DVD drive.

So disk space should not be an issue here.

Anti virus and anti malware software has been disabled during many of these tests and I have also attempted running the clean in safe mode with no differences noted.

I really don't want to do three fresh installations with the reinstalling of all software and getting things back to running order. The last time I did that, it took almost two days per computer to get things working as I need them. If that will be required, I will live with the ongoing loss of disk space for a while until I have sufficient time to mess with it.

Good suggestions though. I should have included that in the first message.

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

Thank you for your patience. It may be caused by a patch of win11. You can try to uninstall it to see if there is space to recover.

The kb3194798 is to update multiple hard links that store system files in C: Windows software distribution and C: Windows winsxs. Because there are too many hard links and the Disk Cleanup tool is not configured to exclude hard links from the equation, you will eventually see this extremely inaccurate calculation.

1. Press Windows + I keyboard shortcut or click Start -> Settings to open Windows Settings app.

2. Click Windows Update in the left panel.

3. Click Update history in the right window to view the update history of your Windows 11 computer.

4. You can check the list of recently installed Windows 11 updates in your system. 

5. Scroll down to click Uninstall updates Select the target update and click Uninstall to uninstall the update from your Windows 11 computer.

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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* Please check and vote this answer if it helps as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.

Thanks, Derek. That is interesting and it may be the reason for the problem on all three computers. All are showing 1.93 GB as ready to be removed with well over 2 GB as the total space to be recovered. Unfortunately, I do not see KB3194798 on the installation history and the uninstall update option does not include it either.

Edit added:

I've done a bit of research and it appears that the KB3194798 was released in October, 2016, for Windows 10. Is it possible that is not the correct name for the update you describe?

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

From your screenshot, it seems that there are no more updates to uninstall. I found similar questions for you in the forum. You can check whether it is effective.

Disk cleanup don't cleans Windows Update Cleanup. - Microsoft Community

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

-----------------------

* Beware of scammers posting fake support numbers here.

* Please check and vote this answer if it helps as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.

Thanks, Derrick, but I've gone through all of those operations and everything is fine as far as services are concerned. I've gone through the Windows Update reset procedures that have been posted in the Microsoft documents, including the manual ones to reset everything and there is no change in this. Something has changed. My machines (all three Windows 11 ones) have all suddenly stopped automatically installing Defender definition updates yesterday and, now, all three of them have a group policy set to not automatically install, but to just notify. I went through all of the group policy options and that one is not present. This is a peer to peer network, not on a domain, and things are going wacky all at once. I may end having to do a clean install of all three machines though I really don't want to. If that's the case, I will have to wait a month or so to get the time to do that.

If you have any more ideas, I'm open. Thanks, again.

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

This is really a very strange problem. I think it may be caused by some programs modifying the current system configuration file. You can try to enter safe mode to see if it can be deleted normally because safe mode can do many things that the system cannot do when running.

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

-----------------------

* Beware of scammers posting fake support numbers here.

* Please check and vote this answer if it helps as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.

Glad that I can pose a challenge (not really). I tried the safe mode thing back when this first started.

I'm beginning to think that your first impression was correct, even if it wasn't the correct update. Something changed my settings on these computers as I found they are now sharing settings which I had turned off. All three now have group policies which are identical and not available in the group policy editor. All three indicate the same for what is available to remove in Windows Update, but none will actually remove that. However, I'm beginning to think that the files have been removed, but the size which Disk Cleaner sees is incorrect.

If this doesn't sort out in the next few days, I'm going to set a week aside to take down the network and do a clean install of Windows 11 and all software on all three machines.

same issue for me, and nothing removes this 2.10 GB of space.

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

For now, you could try to restore your computer to the correct time period before using the restore point to see if it can be changed.

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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* Beware of scammers posting fake support numbers here.

* Please check and vote this answer if it helps as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.