How to Remove Unnecessary Update Files After Windows 8.1 Update

Recently Microsoft has released a new update for their flagship operating system Windows 8.1. The new update brings many security enhancements, performance improvements and new features. The most important thing about the Windows 8.1 update, is that it brings the missing Start Menu back into Windows. This update is usually installed automatically via the Windows Updates feature, but you can also download the KB2919355 update files to your computer and install the update manually yourself. The Windows 8.1 update for 32-bit system can be downloaded from http://goo.gl/bEC9La and for 64-bit system from http://goo.gl/I7l6cM.

But after you have installed the Windows 8.1 Update on your Windows 8.1 PC, it leaves a huge number of files related to the update. Since you have already updated your Windows PC, you no longer need these files. Actually these files are needed if you want to uninstall the update, but that is a very unlikely situation. So why not recover multiple gigabytes of storage space on your hard disk that is otherwise taken up by the Windows 8.1 update files?

If you want to clear the Windows 8.1 update files after you have successfully installed the latest Windows 8.1 update to your system, then you can follow these simple instructions:

  1. Press the hotkey Win+Q to open the App Search screen in Windows. You can hover your mouse cursor near the top-right corner of the screen and click on Search in the charms bar. If you have a touch enabled screen, you can also swipe your screen from right edge to the left to open the charms bar and then tap on Search.
  2. On the App Search screen, type cleanmgr.exe and press Enter, to look for the Windows Disk Cleanup Utility.
  3. When you see this program shows up in the search results, right-click on it to select it (or long-tap on it). This would show more options for the program near the bottom edge of your screen. Select Run as administrator from these options.Windows 8.1 Update Cleanup
  4. It would ask for a target partition. You have to select the partition on which Windows is installed. For most of the users, it is the C: partition.
  5. The Disk Cleanup utility will scan your system for various types of junk files and it may take a few seconds before its main window is displayed. In the Disk Cleanup utility window, you can select the option Windows Update Files from the list.Windows 8.1 Update Cleanup
  6. You can also select other options to clean other types of junk files like the temporary internet files (Internet Explorer cache), system memory dump files and so on. Then click on the OK button and it will clean all the selected junk files including the Windows Update related files. On our test PC, it cleaned more than 800 MB of files for Windows 8.1 update.

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