Windows 11's Big 2024 Update Leaves Behind 9GB of Undeletable Files (pcworld.com) 81
smooth wombat writes: The Windows 11 24H2 update has had a host of issues associated with it including disappearing mouse cursors and blue screens related to Intel drivers. Now comes word that the new update leaves behind over 8 GB of undeletable cache files.
According to Windows Latest, attempts to delete the cache via the Control Panel are unsuccessful. Although you can select the cache for deletion and initiate the deletion process, the cache remains. Various other methods to remove the Windows update cache failed, too. It only cleared after a clean Windows installation altogether.
According to Windows Latest, attempts to delete the cache via the Control Panel are unsuccessful. Although you can select the cache for deletion and initiate the deletion process, the cache remains. Various other methods to remove the Windows update cache failed, too. It only cleared after a clean Windows installation altogether.
You know (Score:5, Funny)
I never thought I'd think on the mid 2000s as a time when Microsoft was competent, but they found a way to lower the bar again.
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Indeed, even before the mid 2000s, Windows 2000 was one of the best ever brewed! Since then, everything pretty much went downhill so TFS seems almost like business as usual to me. I never used anything else than NT based Windows since 2000, I use 2012 Advance server now when I need to fire up a Windows VM, maybe someday I'll upgrade to 2018 if some customer buys me a license.
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Windows 7 was pretty great.
Remains my favorite as a user.
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Indeed, even before the mid 2000s, Windows 2000 was one of the best ever brewed!
I'd say it was the introduction of WinNT. WinNT 3.1 is where we finally got the good stuff.
I never used anything else than NT based Windows since 2000,
Typical, your recollection of good coincides with the switch from Win9x to WinNT. But goodness starts whenever that occurred, at Win2K or at an earlier point.
WinXP is looked at so fondly by many since that is where the Win9x holdouts had to go for the next upgrade.
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Windows 11’s big 2024 update leaves behind ~9GB of undeletable files
By Hans-Christian Dirscherl and Joel Lee
Not sure why it took two people to write a 6 paragraph story, but there is no such thing as "undeletable". You may have to fiddle with file permissions a bit, but if someone as dumb as me can figure it out, anyone can. Sounds to me like Hans und Franz are clueless and incompetent.
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Windows 11’s big 2024 update leaves behind ~9GB of undeletable files By Hans-Christian Dirscherl and Joel Lee
Not sure why it took two people to write a 6 paragraph story, but there is no such thing as "undeletable". You may have to fiddle with file permissions a bit, but if someone as dumb as me can figure it out, anyone can. Sounds to me like Hans und Franz are clueless and incompetent.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
There's your answer, Dirscherl posted the original in PC-WELT and Lee translated/localized it.
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If you're talking about what I think you are, there are two things to fix this-- called, appropriately, WindowsAppsUnfukker. Also, Windows-Store-Fixer is another one. They work pretty well.
Nothing different except the file sizes (Score:2)
I never thought I'd think on the mid 2000s as a time when Microsoft was competent, but they found a way to lower the bar again.
It was no different then. Just the file sizes were smaller.
That's why a fresh install every few years did wonders for system. Made it much more responsive and freed up some disk space.
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I never thought I'd think on the mid 2000s as a time when Microsoft was competent, but they found a way to lower the bar again.
That time frame seemed magical because people were switching from Win9x based operating systems to WinNT based operating systems.
OEMs sold a lot of 32GB computers with Windows 10 (Score:5, Informative)
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They quickly became unusable due to Windows bloat, Microsoft then raised the minimum requirement to 64GB for Windows 11 but they bloated that out too. What's more is that it wasn't NVME or SATA but a proprietary system called eMMC which is a soldiered chip on the motherboard.
I can hear those M$ Developers saying - Because storage space is CHEEP ... And we might need those old files some day
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I think you mean cheap.
Cheep is the sound a bird makes.
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"Cheap" is also the sound a bird makes.
Re:OEMs sold a lot of 32GB computers with Windows (Score:5, Informative)
eMMC is not proprietary at all. It's the predecessor to your bog standard SD card and is basically a managed NAND flash chip. Before SD cards, we had MMC cards. eMMC is merely the embedded version of it.
Your phone probably has eMMC on it, though these days it's probably UFS flash chips for the faster interface.
While soldered as it's meant to be internal, you could rig up a standard SD socket to it and replace it with a larger SD card. It's how things like the Raspberry Pi work when SD card booting - they're really using the eMMC boot option on the chip.
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For a moment I thought you meant with 32GBB of ram ........
Then I recalled all the stupid systems with eMMCs.......
Delete it with Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't use the vendor media for reinstall (Score:2)
Run a Dual boot system and mount your Winblows partition to it. Then delete the files under Linux. I bet they go away that way..
Get the current Win11 image from Microsoft. Use that media rather than the vendor supplied media. Less bloat.
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Get the current Win11 image from Microsoft. Use that media rather than the vendor supplied media. Less bloat.
I was pleasantly surprised when reinstalling Windows 10 on my kid's HP laptop (after a Windows update bricked it) that they keep the key on the machine. You can download the installer from MS and it just works.
Last Windows machine I had, if the OS failed entirely, you were stuck buying a new license because the key on the sticker wouldn't work on a fresh install.
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Get the current Win11 image from Microsoft. Use that media rather than the vendor supplied media. Less bloat.
Recently tried that with a beelink mini pc. The official Windows 11 image from MS wouldn't work, but a vendor supplied image did work. The MS one kept saying there were missing drivers, though I also tried supplying their drivers and a bunch of others. I'm sure it *can* be made to work (maybe if I had wrote the image with Rufus of MS Media Creation Tool?), but I couldn't find anything that made the supplied image work (it did boot - it was written to a USB drive correctly).
That said, I'd agree that's still
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Not if the drive is encrypted with BitLocker unless Linux can access it by now.
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What's the reliability of using Linux to delete NTFS files nowadays?
Honest question.
Re: Delete it with Linux (Score:2)
Re: Delete it with Linux (Score:2)
Before trying Linux, try deleting the stuff from Recovery mode.
Class action lawsuit (Score:3)
Charge Microsoft for the 9GB of hard drive space.
Re:Class action lawsuit (Score:5, Funny)
Charge Microsoft for the 9GB of hard drive space.
... and be sure it's a subscription rental, not a one-time charge.
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How many people have Windows 11 ?
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v. funny
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Remember that good old joke? (Score:3)
From the Windows 95 days:
"Double your drive space! Delete C:\WINDOWS\ !"
The drive sizes have of course changed since then but it seems not much else has.
Undeletable? (Score:5, Informative)
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Windows File Protection actually does a reasonably competent job at making files undeletable, in both senses of the word. If you do manage to delete the files they may actually get restored. In many cases you won't be able to delete these files form within your OS, you'll need to boot into a recovery environment or dual boot another OS. Undeletable is not really hyperbolic.
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Undeletable for the skillset of 99% of Windows users.
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I'm sure it would seem like that to someone who is only capable of reading half a sentence at a time. Try reading my post again and see what I said about those files if they are deleted, and why I said "both senses of the word" undeletable.
I understand why you post AC. I would want a comment that stupid associated with a pseudonym either.
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Windows File Protection actually does a reasonably competent job at making files undeletable, in both senses of the word. If you do manage to delete the files they may actually get restored. In many cases you won't be able to delete these files form within your OS, you'll need to boot into a recovery environment or dual boot another OS. Undeletable is not really hyperbolic.
I'm not familiar with Windows File Protection. Is this something akin to needing Trusted Installer level of privilege?
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I'm not familiar with Windows File Protection. Is this something akin to needing Trusted Installer level of privilege?
It's more convoluted than that.
The files/folders have different handles to them for different security contexts.
In this particular case, trusted installer can read/write(and delete) those files but not traverse the directories for this update.
Other security contexts that can traverse the directories will be given different handles to do so with.
So while the trusted installer context has access to delete the files, it isn't possible to tell it what files to delete.
Another context that can determine the files
Re:Undeletable? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a few things. It's a level of privilege (even admins can't simply delete some files, there's a higher level of privilege called SYSTEM), along with a sort of a backup plan where windows will actively detect "unauthorised" modifications (typically done by malware) by verifying their checksums if a protected file shows up in a directory change notification and restore system files from a cache or windows update.
It's been a while since I played with it, but I tested this once in a VM on a Windows 10 install. After I closed the VM, I mounted the image and deleted C:\windows\fonts\arial.ttf and started the VM. Windows went through a boot loop twice and arial.ttf was magically there as if it were never gone, and the only indication something was wrong was an error in the event log that said a protected file was restored.
This has actually existed since the Windows 2000 days, but back then you needed the windows install CD or a network install source for it to work.
To be clear I'm not sure if that's what is going on here specifically, I'm just saying that there are literally undeletable files in Windows, both in the sense that a user account (even admin) doesn't have the privilege to delete it, and if you do delete it, it will undelete itself.
Re: Undeletable? (Score:3)
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It got worse in 11 I think, even RunasSystem/RunAsTI won't let you delete certain things.
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Go try deleting, or heck even moving C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Platform\4.18.24080.9-0 from within windows.
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Mate, try deleting the Arial.ttf font file. This is far more than just defender defending itself.
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Let's not get hyperbolic.
You must be new here - welcome!
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Let's not get hyperbolic. "Not easy to delete" is probably closer to the truth.
This is /.
We Can't Help But Get Hyperbolic ... About EVERYTHING
Re: Undeletable? (Score:2)
Article was better in the original Klingon (Score:3)
Let's not get hyperbolic. "Not easy to delete" is probably closer to the truth.
"Undeletable" is just a translation error from the original Klingon
Ok but did anybody try (Score:2)
... booting up a less Micky Mouse operating system and cleaning up Microsoft's incontinence with something more absorbent?
Or are these immortal files inhabited by the acrid, haunting, and traumatically awkward presence of literally all the Autism in the universe distilled and compacted into the single most socially unaware idea ever conceived thouhgout all of spacetime: are these files -- in fact -- the way "Recall" is finally reborn into the world?
My opinion: yeah, probably. Learn to use SysInternals, or t
dd will delete it (Score:2)
along with the rest of the Windows partition. So will taking a sledgehammer to the hard disk. Probably not what you want, but just to point out that it's not technically undeleteable.
Your avg win users (Score:2)
The average Windows user won't notice until they run out of space to download pictures they find on the internet. When that happens they'll buy a new computer because "this one's full"
Anyhow the answer is not Linux or dual boot, because the average Windows user does not know every facet of Linus Torvold's being.
I upgradeed to Linux Mint with WINE 9.0 (Score:2)
Waaa? (Score:2)
"It only cleared after a clean Windows installation altogether."
Who writes this stuff? Yeah...if you blow away the entire disk the files on it will be gone.
Next up, water is wet.
It's not worth reclaiming the space? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is preparing a patch to solve the problem, which should be rolled out as part of an upcoming update. Until then, you should leave the Windows Update cache untouched. It really isn’t worth the hassle of reinstalling Windows just to clear those files.
From : https://www.pcworld.com/articl... [pcworld.com]
Only Microsoft could think that 9 GB is worthless. 9 GB is enough to install another operating system, it's enough space to cause serious problems in VMs or Containers, and it's just a headache all around. Just so we're clear, as of 24H2, Windows 11 is still not production ready.
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Real world example: A version of The Sims Vacation did this if it was installed to the OS disk. For some it resulted in a boot failure
With a minimum requirement of a 2TB SSD (Score:2)
What's the fuss all about?
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Re:With a minimum requirement of 64GB storage (Score:2)
FTFY. The minimum storage requirement for Windows 11 is 64 GB.
Proof (Score:5, Funny)
Windows is just a cache grab.
Already out of disk space (100GB) for Win11 (Score:1)
I just bought a new notebook that had Win 11. I looked online to see how much space to leave, ended up leaving 100GB for Win11 and the rest for Linux Mint.
Win11 is already out of disk space. What a joke of an OS. Between that and the "Just wait... I'm using your computer right now... a little longer... ok reboot... wait some more... almost there..."
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Don't worry, a Windows Update is on the way (Score:2)
The update will crank away for a couple of hours, deleting all 9G of hitherto undeletable files one by one. As the progress bar reaches 99% completion, it will encounter a mystery error and and announce that it cannot continue. Then watch as it carefully puts all the deleted files back in place, and then makes them undetectable again.
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Then watch as it carefully puts all the deleted files back in place, and then makes them undetectable again.
Your sig says "Autocorrect can go straight to he'll" - it was autocorrect that changed undeletable to undetectable?
More User Monitization??? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I believe when companies get to the size of Google, Amazon & Microsoft, the C-Suite pressure to increase income per user means that suddenly user "monitization" takes over against all other restrictions which get lowered each time a new "User Agreement" of dozens of pages gets released.
When GAM, can't get more users then they start the GAMING, which is to find ways to start charging each user more and "use more user info" that they can make a profit off of silently.
I simply don't trust t
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Time to charge rent (Score:2)
$1 per byte should be sufficient to make this behavior go right the fuck away.
In a filesystem (Score:2)
there is no such thing as an undeleteable file. There are files that are tricky to delete.