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Restart the computer and del the folder if you have no issues. And despite the fact that you can't see "Disk Cleanup" in disk properties in R2, you can run disk cleanup from the Search box. Why not just add additional space to the C drive virtual hard drive and extend it from Disk Management? Yes, it's okay to delete the contents of that folder. However since it's a server, if you have it set to download updates but not install, it will just fill up that folder again next time it decides to check for updates.

Delete away, but I agree with an above Spicehead about the routine disk cleanup to help manage space issues. But, also, as a VM you could just allocate more space, no?

If he is indeed, just out of space, then more drive space would be logical. Throwing more storage at can get you by, but determining what is going on is important too. If it has the CBS. The CBS logs will just continue to fill the additional space.

Why store and backup GB of glitching logs? I would think you need to highlight how big the drive is and if it is also used for other stuff? Deleting stuff from c: including folders used by temp or windows update in not a measure at all as it shows that the space will have to be used by the system sooner or later To continue this discussion, please ask a new question.

Get answers from your peers along with millions of IT pros who visit Spiceworks. Hello fellow Spiceheads, I have a server which has a full C: drive. Popular Topics in Windows Server. Which of the following retains the information it's storing when the system power is turned off? Submit ». Verify your account to enable IT peers to see that you are a professional. Rockn This person is a verified professional. Your issue will continue to crop up. Is this a virtual or physical server?

Does anyone have a more elegant method of automating this task? There is NO reason, on a properly functioning system, why this folder should ever need to be touched. On the off-chance that the Datastore and the Download folder get de-synchronized, it may be necessary one-time-only to delete any content in the Download folder that is over 10 days old.

In addition, the Datastore contains all of the Windows Update History for the client system. Destroying the SoftwareDistribution folder, except when expressly warranted due to error conditions for which destruction of the SoftwareDistribution folder is the only solution, destroys the entire Windows Update History for that client system. It also results in longer detection times at the next detection, because the WUAgent has to re-cache howeverMany thousands of available updates, as result of the destruction of the Datastore.

When a machine reaches the point that uninstalling a particular patch is not likely needed because it broke something , or was installed so long ago so is not practical to uninstall , you can safely delete these folders. Or write them off to removable storage, or another volume, where they could be copied back if you actually did need them. I typically delete anything more than 3 months old -- more an arbitrary decision than one based in any sort of thought-out logic. Lawrence Garvin, M.

You might want to put some timers in the following script so the commands don't overrun each other. I am not aware of a 'best practice' way of reducing the size of the folder, but I have used methods similar to the one above. However, I do not recommend having it as a computer startup script. While I agree with you Lawrence, the world is not a perfect place. There are some companies out there that are still struggling with 40gb drives and cannot afford to upgrade them or have the SoftwareDistribution folder hog the space.

We would be much better off if everyone followed best practices, but sometimes it is just not an option. That is the reason I stated that I was not aware of any related best practices and helped him towards his goal.

I have rarely seen a case where the SoftwareDistribution folder requires more than a mere mimimal amout of space on any given system. Effective use of Disk Cleanup utilities will produce exponentially greater amounts of impact on disk management than worrying about the minimal content in the SoftwareDistribution folder.

The information you provided him, reinforcing bad information unfortunately available widespread throughout the net despite my best efforts to counteract, like in this thread , are destructive more than helpful, and remove critical information required for the efficient operation of Windows systems. Windows XP systems have typically been around longer than Windows 7 systems and so they will have larger SoftwareDistribution folders 3 SPs instead of 1 for Windows 7 and numerous other updates.

And as mentioned before, if a user has Windows XP, they are more likely to have older hardware, meaning a smaller HD. The Disk Cleanup utility in Windows, in my experience, has been pretty useless. There are a few other simple troubleshooting steps, including looking at the text logs and event logs, but the majority of the issues are covered above. Anything outside of those steps, I typically recommend reimaging the machine as any other troubleshooting will probably take more than 20 minutes, which is the time it takes to reimage a machine.

There are certain cases where reimaging the machine is not an option, such as mission-critical devices, but that is not the majority of systems. I understand that you are an MVP on Software Distribution and most likely can figure out any issue within minutes, but for others it might be easier to reimage the machine and be done with it.

I realize where you are coming from and if you were working for his company, you would do things differently. But he is not you and does not have your competency with WSUS. I am a technical person by nature and prefer to troubleshoot issues so I can find the root cause to make sure they do not happen again. Others are not fortunate to have the time available to do this and must do what they can to get the user back up and running.

Like I said, it is not a perfect world, but we do with what we have. No, they will not, and the SoftwareDistribution folder does not contain service pack files beyond the transient period of time required for actual installation of that service pack. Note: I misspoke in my earlier post and have edited that post to change "30 days" to "10 days". Formatting the drive and reinstalling the Operating System is sometimes easier for some people than performing the proper procedures, but it's never an excuse.

This forum provides support for a product that is designed for use in an environment with IT Professionals, so the working assumption is that all persons posting here are, in fact, IT Professionals.

To that point, my working premise is that all persons here possess the ability to understand, and have the professional obligation TO understand. This is not a consumer forum designed to help users with Automatic Updates or Microsoft Update, so I will not "dumb down" anything in this forum.

When that lack of knowledge is apparent, its incumbent upon those who have that knowledge to properly educate that IT Professional -- and this is what I am doing. Thank you both for your feedback. To clarify things a bit, the systems that are causing me pain are Windows Server servers.

Updates are approved on a monthly basis and are configured to automatically install and reboot on a scheduled basis. When the system in question has less than 1 GB of free space, that's a significant issue. So it seemed to me that the issue is that, for whatever reason, the update source are not cleaning up after they have been installed. The instances where I have stopped the service, deleted the folder structure and restarted the service significantly reduces the amount of space used by the folder even after performing a detection.

What are the downsides to deleting the Windows Update history? FYI - I'm getting pressured to move these folders and log files to another drive, which worries me but that's another discussion.

Is there an alternative, such as a cleanup tool switch that will allow me to keep this folder content clean? I just moved our 6 GB swap file to a different partition to stablize the server giving me exactly 6.

Usage in temp directories is minimal. I cannot find a straight answer on how to clean up the winsxs directory. Unfortunately, Microsoft often doesn't listen to his customers.

I wanted a clean install. I did the updates Why so much failed updates?? Anyway after doing all of them, I just wanted to clean Win updates and minimize the image I will create after that. This is just a matter of staying clean. Why windows folders are always so messy? No offense, but standard MS response to these issues seems to be similarly unhelpful. I have been reading for days now, looking for ways to reduce the unreasonably large and continually growing footprint of Windows 7, without any real answers.

My Software Distribution folder is currently 1. That's completely unacceptable. The WinSxS folder is 6. My install is exactly 2 days old, and I have very few programs on top of it Microsoft Word and Photoshop are the main ones. Right now the install size is 17GB after employing every "best practice" tactic possible including not only everything discussed on these forums, but everywhere else on the internet that I can find, no kidding.

Yesterday it was The reality is these folders take up too much space, and users need an elegant way to deal with them. Reiterating what is unhelpful MS rhetoric in bold and italics to emphasize that it's all been said before isn't the answer. Best practice is to not create such clunky, inelegant OS systems, so "best practice" went out the window when we chose to install Win 7 etc. What we need are workable solutions, and a willingness from those so empowered to find them.

Rich, are you certain about this? Have you tried doing this yourself? Did you install a base image of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 released Spring ,. If you installed the RTM version of Windows 7, and then applied a year-and-a-half worth of updates to the machine in 2 days, then a 1. If you're short on free space, buy a bigger drive. I have a different view coming from desktop administration.

I try to keep the master image as small as possible to reduce bandwith and image times. I only delete the files inside the downloads folder under softwaredistribution. I test the image and make sure it works fine, so no need to uninstall the updates and I have a smaller desktop image size. Your point is well taken; however, 1. Fact is, on a Gigabit LAN backbone, 1. I am a professional audio engineer and work on a Macbook Pro with a solid state drive installed. Needing both Windows7 and OSX for my job, I want both OS systems to be as efficient as possible and not slurping up my disk space like candy You seem to be saying that the folder regulates itself and it will reduce in size after 10 days or so.

Am I understanding you correctly? Garvin, when people come to a forum they are looking for help solving an issue. Not a condescending, asinine tirade detailing how people are whiners about disk space and gasoline in their fancy sports car. Furthermore, I was intrigued by your arrogance and decided to look up your credentials In fact, I wondered how a CTO could post replies like that and still retain their position within the company. Then I looked up your company and I laughed so hard that I spit coffee all over my desk.

What did you edit that website with??? FrontPage 98? I can say that it makes my top 10 all-time list of things to NOT do when creating a website. Please spare the internet from your future incompetence of web programming. And the fact that you tell people that this thread has wandered excessively off-topic and they should go post somewhere else is frankly irritating. That is exactly what this topic is about! The excessive disk space usage by the Windows OS!

Just so all you people out there know, MVP means Microsoft Valued Professional which is a fancy term for someone that posts to the forum frequently. MVPs are independent of Microsoft, with separate opinions and perspectives, and are able to represent the views of the community members with whom they engage every day.

So Mr. Garvin has no authority granted by the Microsoft Corporation to tell anyone anything. Regarding the WinSXS directory, it is full of files you may or may not require to run applications that were designed for an older operating system.

It is a. I find it hard to believe I need those files, but you never know. I can tell you that if you delete all the files in this folder, you will probably create yourself some issues with backward compatibility of applications designed for previous operating systems.

I will continue to research this issue and update my findings if they are helpful. For those of you that are using the AVG Internet Security toolbar, a bug was introduced in version 9. It continues to do so in AVG The only way to get rid of it is to get rid of the AVG toolbar and then delete it. Also, you can use a folder migrating utility to move directories and files to a secondary hard drive.

You can can also move the LocalLow and Roaming folders from AppData over to your secondary hard drive to keep some applications from writing to precious SSD space.

Unfortunately, moving the Local folder is extremely difficult and should be left alone unless you are comfortable with editing the registry.

And for those of you that would like a good laugh, stroll on over to Mr. Garvin's corporation website located at:. That's not a "minimal amount of space" I have a 50 Gb partition and I can't expand it any more. My temp folders are empty and in a different disk drive, and I use the Disk Cleanup utility each and every day because I get constant warnings about my disk space running out.

I've even created scripts to delete Visual Studio debug and trace files, but that doesn't fix that my Windows folder is taking 30 out of my 50 Gbs Most of it comes from the WinSxS, Installer, Assembly and SoftwareDistribution subfolders. And lots of people like Lawrence keep saying that those folders CAN'T be touched, but they don't give an alternative solution The "use the Cleanup utility" solution makes me laugh. In the end, I'll have to format and install everything all over again because Windows overfeeds with time and there's no real way of making it thiner Next time, I'll deactivate automatic Windows updates.

Oh wait! That's not 'best practice' either! I guess I'll just throw my laptop off the window, then. SD Downloads is auto cleaned after a couple of weeks. Purging more often than that can be done by stopping the service, clearing the downloads dir, then restarting WAU.

You're still left with remnants of uninstalled programs MS and third party , plus various caches, duplicates etc. As has always been the case, an occasional clean reinstall from properly slipstreamed media is the best choice. I came here looking for an answer to "why my softwaredistribution folder has 1. I agree with you, ElderJedi, except in that quoted thing.

I think this topic is about a technical person living in his own world and real people trying to find answers in the real world. Thanks for the real answers chaps, stop service, delete folder, start service, jobs a good un. Yes, I'm qualified, a global IT Manager and very tech savvy.

Mr Lawrence needs to learn to calm the hell down - or at least phrase things differently. But - given the photo and website I have no idea which world you live in but in the real world, this folder gets absurdly bloated on even clean machines. I found this thread when looking for a reminder of which services to stop because my three week clean install of Windows 7 x64 has a 3GB SoftwareDistribution folder, something the IT company that I run sees all the times.

Ultimately, the user wasn't asking for advice on when or if he should empty this folder either - just a way to script it because it IS something that needs to be done regularly. Just when I thought nobody could beat my story, you did, Bob. I'll post it anyway -- I have a Windows Server R2 machine built only a year and a half ago. All it does is run SQL Server. It now has 2. So yes, in the real world it does build up -- and it's also endangering the free disk space on that drive all the actual data is on another, large drive.

And nearly half of that space is in a single file, dated a year ago. So no, the files don't necessarily get automatically deleted after 10 days.

I hope I'm not going off topic but this is easily one of the most hilarious threads I've read in quite a while. I was looking to clean up a recent XP install on a laptop with a 20GB drive. For a few of the posts there, I was starting to buy into the shpiel by Fred Garvin actually, you might want to goog that version of the name for another laugh and was resigned to just leaving the damn thing until it basically exploded.

Anyways, the one part of his advice I took was that I only deleted the contents of the download folder ten days be danged , and I went out there and deleted some of the other folders mentioned. Everything seems to be running fine. I think the problem was that the guy's attitude blew up on his face. He was offering an option, and for some reason he chose to issue it as some sort of directive.

Anyways, I can't stop laughing after seeing his site. One of the jokers in the office says it was made before the internet. I have been reading various posts on this and, like this thread, there is controversy over the prudence of simply deleting them.

Do any of you have any observations on that? It seems related to this thread, but perhaps not. From a clean install of Windows Server R2 Standard, with all updates incl. SP1 installed, it took 15,4 Gb footprint. So, I got back 4 Gb just by doing these two simple points, falling from 15,4 to 11,4 Gb footprint. FYI ElderJedi, believe it. Net Framework timeframe, you might've seen those tags as well. Just like you may start seeing ARM tags once Win8 ships. At the risk of sounding pedantic, AMD is the one that added the x64 instruction extensions to the x86 chipset, since Intel was off playing with Itanium at the time.

When it was clear that the x86 architecture needed bit extensions i. Now, to bring this back on topic, don't delete those files from your WinSXS folder, especially if you're running a bit machine. Bad things will happen. A senior programmer? A "Senior" would imply someone with knowledge and understanding in their field. I came to this thread to find out some information about the SoftwareDistribution folder and all I found was a bunch of children "member-measuring" in front of each other.

ElderJedi, you resorted to abusing another member on the forum like a child and brought no value to the discussion at all. You talk about. You have a bit processor in your i7 laptop, which is of AMD64 architecture. If I were your employer and read this post, I would be questioning your "senior" position as a programmer, who should know what AMD64 architecture is.

As condescending as Lawrence's post may be, he is right. I couldn't find anything too wrong with anything he stated, as evangelistic as he is. You cannot recommend someone rebuild a server simply because Windows Update doesn't work. That is not and efficient way of thinking, especially when you mentioned the "destruction of data is never the correct answer" in the same breath.

When you have a corrupt Windows Update Repository Datastore, sometimes deleting this and allowing Windows Update to repopulate it is the best course of action. Onto the topic of discussion here. If you are deleting the SoftwareDistribution folder, recreating it and then pushing updates to it and wonder why it's growing If you are worried about space on your system drives, expand them.

You are wasting your employers money playing cleanup duties on system drives when you should be solving real problems in your environment. Sure I may not have added to this forum's topic, but just remember what this forum is "Social.

It was never my intent to suggest that somebody should rebuild a server just to repair Windows Update in fact, totally to the contrary. I absolutely agree. I can see this discussion has been going on for a while. I would have hoped someone from Microsoft or with an MS Support contract might have stepped in and cleared up the matter, but alas seems still left to people with although considerable experience, can't absolutely say for sure what to do about all these files.

My main reason for wanting to nuke it is the malware scan is taking forever and I don't see any reason to keep old files that are no longer needed. I'm going to delete everything prior to I hope I will be safe.

But the other point is it seems Microsoft is being a bit sloppy in not doing a better job cleaning up after themselves - imho. Full disclosure I'm running a Vista bit circa so I've had some time to build up files. But again, why can't Microsoft clean up after themselves better. The scans are taking forever to get through what no doubt is mostly garbage at this point.

They should put more focus on their core products, OS and office productivity. Their OS's still seem to have some glaring deficiencies.

No, that's not the same issue. The WinSXS folder is a permanent archive and is designed to be that large on a system with years of patches applied. It's why the disk space requirements for the OS are what they are. ITPros should learn the architecture and operation of the Operating System before becoming a critic.

The fact that you're still running a Vista x64 system in speaks much more to the point than I think you may imagine. And how about to delete only particular folder under "SoftwareDistribution", Datastore? I'm trying to fix wuauclt. If the performance improves, then perhaps, as the MS Answers thread from suggests - it was a defective data store -- however, given that time frame mid and on XP systems, I'm much more inclined to think it was the Office issue.

Around that time frame, a number of systems with Office and 8 years of updates applied, and to a lesser extent even today, some Office systems that are approaching 5 years of updates applied, had performance issues because of the number of update packages in the MSI Installer folder.

For those systems the remediation was to uninstall Office or Office and then reinstall Office with the latest service pack, and then apply the remainder of the required Office patches. But not withstanding that possible scenario, the SD folder is merely a cache of what's on the WSUS server relevant to that particular client, so performance issues are almost always an effect of what's on the WSUS server.

You can search this forum for the keyword 'timeout' and find dozens of discussions of this condition. Your observations seem to make a lot of sense, though I don't pretend to fully understand especially the part about WSUS. I have what I hope are two simple follow-up questions, one related to wuauclt my problem appears to be intense harddrive activity connected with wuauclt and one related to the possible Office reinstall fix.

Re wuauclt, you mention in a different post the need to know what version is running. How do I find that out and what minimum version do I want?

Does the fact that it says SP3 mean that my problem would likely not be solved by an Office reinstall? It's logged at service startup in the WindowsUpdate. It can also be determined by checking the file version of the wuaueng.

Not at all. In fact, that you are still running Office makes this a high probability condition. The mere fact that Office is still installed on a machine suggests that the Office installation has been in place for several years, inasmuch as most systems built after shipped with Office However, I will grant that some organizations have not upgraded, or are unable to upgrade, and are still using Office because it's all they have.

What's the relevant point is how Office has been updated. Thanks, Lawrence, for the direct and to the point reply. I will follow-up on all the observations you made. This thread was fun to read. Just wiped 8 GiB worth of junk from there.

And surely permissions do not work on any other drive. 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.