Delete windows 10 downloaded update files

To fix most of the Windows Update issues in Windows 10, usually it is enough to run the built-in Windows Update troubleshooter. When you run into issues though with updates, you may spend hours or even days figuring out what is going wrong. In such case, you can try to delete downloaded Windows Update files to start over. The SoftwareDistribution folder contains files related to updates obtained via Windows Update, it is present on all versions of Windows. It could have a couple of hundreds megabytes of size.

But if this folder is much larger, this indicates that some updates are corrupted. Restart Windows 10 and check for updates.

See if this fixed your issues. The command net stop wuauserv stops the Windows Update service. The del command erases the contents of the Download folder and its subfolders. Search the community and support articles Windows Search Community member.

Bill swindon. This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. In reply to A. User's post on September 23, I think I didn't make myself clear enough.

I will try to explain in different way: When I am offered a windows update I download an executable file. After the file is run and the update is complete the downloaded file is still on my PC. When operating systems update, they do so without requiring a fresh installation. The updates are incremental and installed on top of the current OS. If users were forced to do a fresh install of the OS every time there was an update, not a lot of people would bother with it. The update process is handled entirely by the operating system with the user given the option to choose when the update is installed, but nothing else.

Sometimes updates fail to install and its the downloaded files that are to blame. On Windows 10, a failed update is all too common. You can delete a Windows 10 update from your system and download it again if it continuously fails to install. Before we explain how you can delete a Windows 10 update, you need to know that this works only for updates that have been downloaded but not installed.

If an update is installed, you cannot remove it with a simple delete command. You have to instead roll back to a previous version of the operating system.