Windows Updates don't seem to be getting cleaned up properly on any of my 2022 servers, every month I'm getting disk space warnings and having to run cleanmgr manually. Can't seem to find a good way to automate this on 200+ servers, or why it's doing this in the first place?
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If you have 200+ servers, I am not surprised you are not using an RMM that monitors disk space and when reaches a certain threshold it will kick of its disk cleanup script (or custom script) that will clean out temp files etc for you.
Here is a script we pulled from an old RMM that we used and that has since evolved to clean out more folders.
https://gitlab.com/mmckinnon/sysadmin-scripts/-/blob/master/General/CleanTemp.ps1
This cleans out the N-Able Updates Cache Folder, Windows\Temp folders, Users Profile Temp folders, Software Distribution Folder (Windows Updates) and a few others thrown in for good measure.
Use at your own risk. But should to do job for you. Modify as needed.
Thanks, the odd thing is though that whatever cleanmgr is cleaning up is not in SoftwareDistribution where one would expect to find it: https://i.imgur.com/0WsllTi.png
Those are most likely references the hidden Windows Update/Upgrade folder - $WINDOWS.~BT
https://helpdeskgeek.com/what-is-the-windows-bt-folder-and-can-you-delete-it/
This folder usually sticks around where an update or upgrade has failed and hasn't been cleaned out.
My first thing would be that servers tend to bloat, and if you are hitting a space wall with updates then it may be time to consider as the disk footprint shrinks and the average update size goes up, where does that lead? Like are you always pushing to say 20% free, but never far past, would adding another 10% make them ride without consequence?
But, I ran '22 servers for years and never saw this, is it a recent change in how updates are delivered?
And to be clear this is happening across all 200 of your servers? That seems excessive, and even accommodating for it in disk size has to be negatively impacting backup and other processes...
So the WHY of it seems better to chase than the regular cleaning.
How are updates being distributed?
code- [OP] 1 points · Mar 2025 · Sysadmin
Yeah the actual why is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. Google has never turned up anything other than the usual suspects, so it has to be something in the local environment here. Windows updates seem to eventually use however much I give them. It wasn't $WINDOWS.~BT as suggested earlier either. Possible something was messed up during template creation, but from what I'm told not much was done with that template either.
We're using WSUS to distribute updates and as far as I've found there's nothing weird going on there either.
GeneMoody-Action1 1 points · Mar 2025 · Action1 | Patching that just works
I have to admit I am not aware of a single thing that could cause it to just collect like that. Except *maybe* some DO setting, what does HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DeliveryOptimization\Config look like for the settings max cache size and age?