Windows 7 update files download location

MakeUseOf Articles Published. Subscribe to our newsletter Join our newsletter for tech tips, reviews, free ebooks, and exclusive deals! Click here to subscribe. How to Fix a Disabled iPhone or iPad. I had an issue today that may be related to this. I installed the windows update to my win 10 machine, and it put the temporary files on a RAID partition.

On reboot to finish off the update the machine got stuck in a reboot loop and the only fix was pulling the RAID card after which the update was rolled back. The problem I experienced could be unrelated, but it would be sensible to be able to control where windows sticks its files. Office Office Exchange Server. Not an IT pro? Windows Server TechCenter. Sign in. United States English. Ask a question. Quick access. Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. Answered by:.

Archived Forums. Sign in to vote. Windows Update and for all I know other MS Update services appears to download to a temporary folder in the root of the drive with the most free space at the time of the download.

Is there any way of steering the Update service to restrict itself to local drives or even better to specify an exact path for the temporary download folder. I have been searching the internet for an answer to this but so far drawn a blank. I'm hoping this might be the forum with an answer. Thanks - Bill. Wednesday, March 17, PM. Windows Update and for all I know other MS Update services appears todownload to a temporary folder in the root of the drive with the most free space at the time of the download.

This is not an accurate statement. If you're downloading from the Microsoft Download Center, IE may be writing the temporary file into the cache before copying to the final destination. Windows Installer does create a temporary folder on the logical volume with the most free space, during the actual installation process, but that folder is be deleted after use.

Correct, for use of Windows Installer this may not be desirable behavior. However, your issue here is with the Windows Installer application, and using the appropriate options where available to control the location of the installation directory on such systems when performing such installations is the solution. As Robear notes, it's really beyond the scope of this forum. But then, as noted, this is not the Update Service causing this scenario, but rather the Windows Installer.

Possibly because you're lookin' up the wrong tree for the answer. Monday, March 22, PM. Thursday, March 18, PM. As this thread has been quiet for a while, we assume that the issue has been resolved. If the issue still persists and you want to return to this question, please reply this post directly so we will be notified to follow it up.

You can also choose to unmark the answer as you wish. By sharing your experience you can help other community members facing similar problems. Monday, March 29, AM. Thursday, July 18, PM. This has been driving me insane too. Hi Martin, what happen if i deleted the downloaded file? It simply removes the cached update files but does not impact the system in any other way. It does not remove installed updates.

Hope they go away soon… or learn to be polite. For particularly pernicious cases, I have a script to do all of it. It also clears out catroot: net stop wuauserv net stop bits net stop cryptSvc net stop msiserver. Easier just to rename the SoftwareDistribution file.

The OS will rebuild it again on the next reboot. Okay, tech-challenged senior here…am running Win7, do I need to do this? Is it really something I should try? Or is this for Win10 only? Is this something I even really need? I have very little idea what these comments are even about.

There are some exceptions: a if you run into update issues as described in the article, b if you want to clear up space after all updates are installed properly and leftover files are still in the folder.

This works in all recent versions of Windows, not only in Windows Great, thanks, Martin. But thanks again. I had MG! Thank you!!!!! Amazing results: Began with only MB available storage on my C drive before emptying the SoftwareDistribution folder, which contained Win 10 ver repeatedly failing to complete installation over the past month I tried and tried, not enough space.

Immediately after: 5. After restarting: 5. Manufacturers are now no longer allowed to pre-install Win 10 on low storage 32 GB devices. Glad I found this aricle, saved me! I follow the process you shared and it delete the patch but when i click on check for updates under windows update in windows R2 wsus client or any other wsus client all the patch which i deleted came again.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. We are presenting today the manually method and the automatic one:. If you want to skip all the manually steps mentioned you can simply create a. Open e new text file, copy the following commands and paste. After that, save the text file as. Do not forget to run the script as administrator:. When you click ok, Disk Cleanup runs and cleans up the unnecessary files on your machine.

You can see it running the Windows Update Cleanup as part of this below. The process will start so you need to wait.