Do you know that every time your Windows 10 finish update it will left a bunch of files on your PC, and the size is pretty huge. It will remain there if you don’t clean em up. So in this post I will show you how to delete old Windows 10 update files and other ‘junk-files’ without any additional software and free up your storage space.
Windows by default will keeps the old update files in order their user to be able to roll back to previous version. The old file size could be 20 GB in size, that is a waste of storage space especially for you who have a PC with a small sized of hard drive. If you are happy using Windows 10 as your operating system then you don’t need to kept them anymore for sure right?
So how to do it?
Delete old Windows 10 update files
To delete old update files is simply by right click on the hard disk icon on Windows files explorer in this case right click on Local Disk (C:) > Properties > General
And then click on ‘Disk Cleanup’ button. In the next window do not click OK button, instead click on ‘Cleanup My System’ see screen shot below
And let Disk Cleanup calculating how much space you will be able to free up on the system disk /Local Disk (C:)
Next step on Disk cleanup for (C:) window, scroll down the list of files that you can delete and find for ‘Previous Windows Installation(s)’ see screenshot
Check the box and then click OK, when the dialog box pop up ask you ‘Are you sure want to permanently delete these files’ just click on ‘Delete Files’ button.
Once again a pop up dialog will warn you that if you clean up the previous Windows 10 installations files you will no longer be able to restore the machine back, it’s okay just click ‘Yes’ to execute.
Additionally! you can also check the Temporary files and Recycle bin too if you see there is a big number of unnecessary files there.
Let Windows cleanup your hard drive, it will take a few minutes for windows to finish the job for you
That’s it, now you have more space in system disk that you can use to install your favorite apps or games.
Other tips to DIY clean up Windows “junk files”
Other “junk files” that you can cleanup is hidden in “Temp” folder that you can delete manually. To do that first you need to make hidden files visible in Windows.
To make hidden files shown go to Search > Control Panel > File Explorer Options > Views
By default the setting is set to “Dont show hidden files, folders or drives” change it to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” Click ‘Apply’ ‘OK’
Then go to Local Disc (C:) > Users > ‘Your PC Username’ > Appdata > Local > Temp
Select all files there by pressing Ctrl + A and delete em all. You may get warning for deleting some files just that’s okay! just click Skip.
You can do this as your regular disk cleanup for maintaining your PC.
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