As a precautionary measure to avoid the arrival to our pc of potentially unreliable updates, we may delay them. With this we want to tell you that the operating system itself allows us to pause the arrival of these for seven days. This will allow us to wait and see if other users have problems with these arrivals before installing them on our computer.
For this we no longer have access to the application of Windows 10 Settings, for example through the Win + I key combination. At that moment we have to go to the option called Update and security / Windows Update. To finish what we are looking for here, we just have to click on the option called Pause updates for 7 days. It is worth mentioning that this is a period of time that will increase as we press more times in the future.
With everything and with this, it is advisable to carry it out for a few days, not forever. Keep in mind that keeping Windows 10 updated will provide us with many advantages, both functional and security. In fact, Microsoft itself recommends us to keep the updated system at all times.
Avoid failures when updating
But this does not exempt us from some possible failures that we are going to detect when updating the operating system. Well, you have to know that unless we use third-party applications to control windows updatethe system usually saves a cache in this regard. Specifically, we are talking about Windows 10 keeping a cache with the data generated by this functionality, all in order to control everything related to these updates. Something that we should also know is that this cache, in addition to taking up a lot of space on the hard drive, can be the cause of many of the problems that we encounter related to Windows updates.
That is why, as we are going to show you below, clear this windows update cache It can be very useful to us from now on. First of all, it is usually one of the most effective ways to end the problems here, in addition to helping us save disk space.
What is cache
The first thing we must take into consideration is that in addition to the Microsoft operating system, Windows, we make use of the cache in many programs and platforms. And it is that its usefulness in all these solutions is very high thanks to the versatility that it offers us. The main reason for all this is that it allows us to improve the performance of those platforms or applications in most cases. However, it can also cause some problems like the one at hand at the moment.
The first thing we should know is that, when we refer to the cache, we are actually talking about a file or set of these that are not permanent and that allow us to store information temporarily. It is also important to know that this memory may be needed again in the future, so in the meantime it is kept hidden until it is actually needed. In short, we can say that the cache is a mechanism which is used on many occasions to make the performance and operation of applications better, faster and more reliable.
On the contrary, if this temporary memory is not used correctly, both in the reading and writing processes, it can become saturated and present serious problems. This would negatively affect platforms that need to use the cache at any given time. Hence, on so many occasions, for example, in the web browsersin many situations of malfunction it is recommended to clear the cache of the application.
Clear Windows Update cache in Windows
Well, this is precisely what we want to talk about in these same lines, we are referring to the possibility of delete cache Windows Update easily.
We must bear in mind that one of the main drawbacks that Microsoft has encountered over the years in windows, is everything related to updates. All this despite the work and efforts that the firm itself has been carrying out over the last few years. It is true that many users fear updating the OS due to potential problems related to downloading and installing these software items.
But it is also true that we ourselves can take some previous measures in order to solve or try to avoid these failures related to the aforementioned updates.
Precisely one of them is the one that we are going to mention below and that is directly related to the cache of the application of windows update. In addition, as we are going to show you in these same lines, this is a process that we can carry out in a matter of minutes and it is not complicated at all. Even users who are new to the Microsoft system will be able to clean this memory to improve the functionality of this section and avoid problems with Windows updates.
Once we know all this, therefore, to achieve this, the first thing we must do is stop the service corresponding to the functionality that we mentioned.
Stop the update service
In order to access this specific section of the operating system, for example, we can write the term Services in the system search box. This is found in the Taskbar located at the bottom of the Desktop. This will not give way to the control window of these elements, that is, to the Windows Services application, which is what we are interested in in this case.
Once the new window appears on the screen windows services, we have to locate the one called precisely Windows Update. We double click on it to open its configuration and in the General tab click on the Stop button.
As you can imagine, this is the service that precisely refers to the application that is responsible for updating the operating system and that is running in the background at all times. So here what we just did is stop service of the system and thus pause the updates that could reach us from now on.
In the event that the Stop button is not active at that moment and it appears that we can click on Start, that means that the service is disabled beforehand, something we have already done in the past.
Remove unnecessary data from updates
Once we have already stopped the Windows Update service, we open an Explorer window with the key combination Win + E. In this case we must move to the disk path that we indicate below:
C:/Windows/SoftwareDistribution/Download
It is worth mentioning that this is where all Windows Update updates are downloaded and where the system caches them. Of course, at first we may not see anything here, since by default these elements are hidden. Thus, before being able to see and delete them we must activate the “Hidden elements” option within the View tab of the Explorer.
To finish what we are looking for, clear the cache and free up a significant amount of disk, all we have to do is select and delete all the files that appear here. This will only be carried out if we have administrator permissions, since we are referring to a folder of the operating system itself. With all this that we have told you, what we have achieved is to solve the problems related to the Windows Update cache.
Now all that remains is to return to service manager that we saw before and locate the same Windows Update entry to turn it back on. Otherwise it would be disabled and we would not receive updates, which is not recommended in most cases.
With the Disk Cleanup app
Windows natively incorporates an application that allows us to free up hard drive space, an application that also allows us to delete the space occupied by updates that have been downloaded and installed, even if we have installed more recent updates. In 99% of cases, the computer will never use that space again, so we can delete it and free up space on the hard drive.
To eliminate all that space that is being used on the computer, we must run the application Disk Cleanup from the Windows search box. Next, click on Clean up system files.
As we can see in the image above, the space available for the windows updates, cache and temporary internet files occupy almost 5 GB of space, 3 GB being space occupied by Windows updates already installed on the computer and which have no use for the computer. To delete and recover that space, check the corresponding box and click OK. This process, unlike what you might initially think, is somewhat slow and can take several minutes, even if our team uses an SSD. On computers with mechanical hard drives, the time will be considerably longer. We can also delete extra space by deleting the error dump filesanother section that also usually takes up a lot of space on the hard drive.
Disadvantages of this file deletion
Perhaps some of you at this point wonder why the operating system itself saves these files on the drives. More so if we take into account that on many occasions this automatically stored information occupies several gigabytes unnecessarily on hard drives. Let’s start from the assumption that these updates that Microsoft sends us almost constantly, of greater or lesser size, do not always work as well as we would like at first.
In fact, on many occasions we have found that after updating Windows some components stop working or the computer simply does not start. It goes without saying that this can be a hard setback when it comes to continuing to work with our computer in a conventional way. This is precisely the reason why the operating system of automatically save information related to these updates.
All this will allow us to go back a step back in this regard in a much faster and easier way in the event that we need it urgently. However, if after a few hours or a few days, we see that the computer and its system work perfectly without any problem, that is when we can delete all those gigabytes unnecessarily occupied by the Windows Update function.
All this means that before eliminating those saved data For Windows, let’s test that after updating everything works as it should, something that is the most common, although unfortunately this is not always the case.
Facebook Comments
Disqus