New Feature: Windows Update Cleanup

Microsoft released a new update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8 on Tuesday that adds an option to clean up Windows Update files to the Disk Cleanup tool. The update, KB 2852386, allows you to delete unneeded backups of old Windows updates. Here’s how it works:

Type Disk Cleanup into the Start menu and press Enter. The program will prompt you which disk you want to perform a cleanup on. Choose the one Windows is installed on (most likely the C: drive) and click OK.

The program will scan for files to clean up. Once it opens, click “Clean up system files”

Wait for Disk Cleanup to scan for system files to clean up. At one point it will say “Scanning: Windows Update Cleanup”.

Select Windows Update Cleanup and click OK. You should be able to recover at least a gigabyte of disk space by doing this, and most likely a lot more if you’ve installed a lot of updates since installing Windows. In my screenshot, it shows 2.04 MB because I had already run Disk Cleanup.