How to Delete Downloaded Windows Updates Which Failed to Install

By: Ivan Jenic

▪ March 27, 2018 ▪

2 minute read

Home » Windows » How to Delete Downloaded Windows Updates Which Failed to Install

Update process could be annoying itself, but it’s especially teasing when it takes your time to download updates, but then is unable to install them. These corrupted updates just unnecessarily take your disk space, and you should get rid of them, and here’s how to do that.

Softwaredistribution folder contains files related to Windows Updates, it is present on all versions of Windows and it should have a couple of hundreds megabytes of size. But if this folder is larger, you have some corrupted updates in, and it will take more disk space. So, in order to get rid of these corrupted updates and free up some disk space, you’ll have to delete corrupted updates from Softwaredistribution folder. To do so, follow these instructions:

Go to This PC and open the partition you have your Windows installed on (it’s usually C:)
Go to Windows folder
In Windows folder, find the folder named Softwaredistribution and open it
Open sub-folder Download and delete everything from it (you might need an administrator permission)
Now go to Search, type update and open Windows Update Settings
Go to Advanced Options and set Notify to schedule restart under Choose how updates are installed

That’s all, your corrupted updates are now deleted and you should be able to check for good ones normally. You don’t have to follow steps 5 and 6 from the resolution above, but we included this because it’s useful to control when you install updates because it won’t interrupt your work and updates could be installed naturally when you want, without any ‘side-effects’ from third-party software.

Updating drivers manually is very dangerous as you can download and install the wrong driver version.We recommend you to download Tweakbit’s Driver Updater (approved by Norton and Microsoft) to do it automatically. Thus, you will prevent file loss and even permanent damage to your computer.

If you have some comments, suggestions, or maybe some alternate solution for corrupted updates problem, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, other readers will surely love to hear that.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2015 and has been revamped and updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness. We want to be sure that our list has the best products that will fit your needs.