I'm trying to free up some space on my Windows 11 PC, and I've noticed that I have about 30GB worth of .msp files. I understand these files are typically important for software updates, but keeping that much space occupied seems excessive. I've used Patchcleaner, which only manages to clear around 250MB of orphaned files, and a lot of the files remain excluded by filters. Even the Disk Cleanup tool hasn't made a significant impact. How can I determine which .msp files are safe to delete? The file names are not helpful at all, and I really want to clear out some space without causing issues. Any guidance would be appreciated!
3 Answers
If you have Adobe software, it could be worth checking there. I used PatchCleaner to relocate 52GB of Adobe files to another drive and so far, everything is still working fine. You can click the gear icon in PatchCleaner and delete the 'Acrobat' entry. Just keep some of those files backed up for safety for a while!
One approach is to move the .msp files to another folder and see if you encounter any issues after a few days. If everything seems fine, then you can safely delete them. Just make sure to keep backups of your important data before making any changes!
The safety of deleting .msp files really depends on where they are located. If they're in the 'C:WindowsSoftwareDistributionDownload' folder, you can delete that entire directory without worry. Same goes for temporary folders. When using Disk Cleanup, be sure to select the 'Clean up system files' option to find and remove more data. If you're still struggling with that much usage, your SSD might be too small, as it’s recommended to keep it below 90% capacity for optimal performance.
Also, for more space, you can clean up the Microsoft update history by running some commands in an elevated command prompt. This will remove old update files but remember it will disable your ability to uninstall future updates. Here's how:
```
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
```
Then run this next:
```
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
```
This can save you quite a bit of space!