Windows 11 / Microsoft
Upgrading to Windows 11 24H2 takes up quite a bit of space during installation and doesn’t give everything back More than 8 GB may remain.
Installation Windows 11 update 2024 creates an 8.63 GB update cache that cannot be deleted with a disk cleanup program. The presence of the Windows Update cache is quite normal. It’s visible in the «Disk Cleanup» tool, but an error in Windows 11 24H2 prevents the cache from being cleared. «Disk Cleanup» tries to delete files but does not work — Windows Update cleanup cache continues to take up to 8.63 GB.
If you try to delete the files in the folder, this also fails. Deleting the windows.old folder and running the Disk Cleanup tool again with the option «Windows Update Cleanup» does not help either. Restoring Windows 11 also doesn’t solve the problem, but a clean install, as expected, fixes the problem.
However, Microsoft is already aware of the error. It turned out that this is a widespread problem, and many people have reported it to the Feedback Center. The company informed the site Windows Latest, that it plans to release a fix in a future update.
The site suggests that 8.63 GB of cache is created due to «checkpoint updates». This is a new feature that tries to reduce the size of Windows updates. Instead of creating an update from the original release (RTM), Windows 11 will now use the newer checkpoint as the starting point. As a result, updates will be smaller and install faster. Components from the current checkpoint update, such as September’s KB5043080, are marked as required for future updates, so they cannot be removed during a cleanup.
Windows Latest does not recommend removing these components as they may break future Windows updates. It is also noted that the cache may not actually occupy the entire 8.63 GB, and the numbers that can be seen in the disk cleanup program are overestimated.