Win10 fails update - insufficient memory
 

A friend has a laptop computer that repeatedly starts to upgrade it's Win10 but fails due to insufficient space. He has asked me to remove all of the stuff (bloat) that he never needs. Another thread on here suggests that Win10 installs a fresh suite and retains the previous version? Is this correct and is it a necessary way to get the upgrade?

The thing is about 2 or 3 years old and I have no idea how many upgrades have already occurred.

My instinct tells me to stop automatic upgrades......... What do you all think?

Alternatively, is there a safe easy way to remove the left over stuff and previous installs, if there are any?

Thanks,

Rans6.........................

Further info. I have the machine here for attention and I can immediately see what is causing the problem. Lenovo in their wisdom have installed 20GB of Win10 on a machine with only 29GB of SSD. I have blitzed all of the bloat I can find, all that remains is OpenOffice and few spreadsheets files which are required and a browser. There are no photos, videos or music files. Nothing more than a few 100KB. The update fails as it wants 8GB of free space and there isn't that much left.

So, plan B. Stop updates from happening except that there isn't a switch for automatic updates in the controlling updates dialogue box or the "pause until dd/mm/yy" which one of the on-line help pages suggested would be the answer to my prayers.

Rans6...............

In Network Settings change the network properties to say it is a metered connection. Make sure Updates Advanced has download over metered connections Off. This should stop the updates. A replacement 250gb SSD should cost less that £50 (say £100 including installation if you are not happy to do it youself). Why struggle on with a 29gb SSD.

Have you used Disk Cleanup which will remove temp files for you etc.

Read the options carefully because the actions cannot be undone and some of them will affect the ability to return the system to an earlier state - e.g. roll back windows updates.

https://www.howtogeek.com/266337/wha...up-on-windows/
That seems a decent article.

Replave the 29Gb drive with something bigger. 29Gb is way too small to do anything other than boot up and switch off. All other approaches will just kicj the problem down the road for a few months.

Disabling updates is dangerous - you'll just leave the machine vulnerable to every passing malware attack.

PDR

Having set metered connection in network settings I now find that the option to allow updates over metered connections OFF is not in the update options advanced (or any other related) menus. Where is it hiding?
So much of the stuff I expect to find in control panel is missing in 10.

I agree that the drive is too small, but I like workarounds so here is one more.

If it applies in this case, apply the updates in smaller numbers.

e.g. if there are 6 to apply, do them in two batches of three, or whatever you need to do to make it work.

rans. Go to Settings/update and security/Windows update/advanced options, then it's second from the top. Also what PDR1 said but a short term fix may be useful.

ahem..... Settings offers Update & Security which offers Windows Update which offers Update history, and under Update settings there is change active hours (don't restart while busy), Restart options (handles logins etc) and Advanced options (what else gets updated when Windows updates) and Choose how updates are delivered (decide how many more machines on your network suffer at the same time!). Nothing to stop the OS updating or manually decide which bits to do. It clearly states that Available updates will be downloaded and installed automatically.

Looking at the Update history shows that all of the incremental security updates go through OK but the larger updates often take several tries, the number is getting bigger.

Not sure why that should be. Not like either of my laptops. Is this laptop connected via Wi-Fi or is it on a LAN? Try going to Settings/Network and Internet, under Status you should see Change Connection Properties in there you should find settings for Metered Connection, set that on.