Clean up

Ghot said:

No, it was disk cleanup. After we told it to clean C: we had to also tell it to clean system files.
Then it would clean the LCU folder. But somewhere back around Oct. - Nov. last year... Disk Cleanup stopped cleaning the LCU folder.

Last time I checked on this was in April last year. By default Windows Update should keep the last three CUs in LCU, after which installing the next CU will automatically delete the oldest one. Disk clean up should delete all but the latest one.

I haven't checked recently as, like others have said, I routinely delete the contents of LCU after each CU.

Bree said:

Last time I checked on this was in April last year. By default Windows Update should keep the last three CUs in LCU, after which installing the next CU will automatically delete the oldest one. Disk clean up should delete all but the latest one.

I haven't checked recently as, like others have said, I routinely delete the contents of LCU after each CU.

That's good to know about the 3 folder retention.

As for Disk Cleanup, MS turned this part of it OFF, around Oct - Nov 2020.

Any repercussions if contents are deleted ?

CountMike said:

Any repercussions if contents are deleted ?

I seem to remember that if I deleted ALL of the folders in LCU, it broke something.
That's why I started using... Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

...and I've had no repercussions from using the command.

CountMike said:

Any repercussions if contents are deleted ?

Deleting the LCU removes the ability to uninstall that CU. So best to let it ride for a day or two to settle and make sure the CU didn't bork something, then delete it if you want. There's always MR as a fall back.

Last update was on May 25, KB5003214, directory was created May 26, but some files are from way before that date. First one from January 2nd. (windows-commonlogservicesapi_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.19041.21_none_6678a7f9addc5612.manifest).
I'm not there yet but with a size of 1GB I can see where in some cases it could be part of disk space problem.
Personally I don't care if I had to uninstall old updates, God knows I have enough MR backups anyway and no apparent reason to get rid of them anyway.
Just for test, I'll move them to another disk and see what happens.

Ghot said:

....As for Disk Cleanup, MS turned this part of it OFF, around Oct - Nov 2020.

I think it's more subtle than that. I've notice that after some CUs the 'Windows Update clean-up' did not appear in Disk Clean up, this seems more a problem with that particular CU than Disk clean up itself. When it does appear it works as expected, removing all but the latest CU from LCU. When it doesn't you'd need to start the clean up yourself with dism /online /cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup

I've just tested that in a VM, using viBoot to run up an old system image and letting Windows Update catch up on the two CUs it had not received. When Windows Update clean-up does appear it still deletes all but the latest CU from LCU.

CountMike said:

Any repercussions if contents are deleted ?

None that I've seen, and I routinely delete the contents of LCU on my six (now seven) machines.

But then I never try to uninstall a CU, I have Macrium images for that

Ghot said:

Well the next time you do an update, there will be. Each CU leaves one of those folders.
Lately, they've each been about 1GB in size.

Disk Cleanup, used to take care of these folders in the LCU folder, but MS removed that function from Disk Cleanup about 5-6 months ago, for some reason.

probably because they spy on us.

Count: I ran dism, and all I got was 100% successful

My LCU today

Bree said:

None that I've seen, and I routinely delete the contents of LCU on my six (now seven) machines.

But then I never try to uninstall a CU, I have Macrium images for that

I do exactly the same