The Windows Disk Clean Up utility, which helps you get rid off files that are no longer in use on your system, will still be available in Windows 8.1 but it adds a nice feature to help you manage your disk storage levels even more.
When you download updates and fixes from Windows Update copies are kept o fall the installed updates. This new feature will clean up or compress the older updates that are no longer needed and just taking up space.
It is easy enough to access this utility in Windows 8.1.
Beginning on the Start Screen just type “free up disk space” without the quotes.
Select the first entry that matches your search.
The next dialog you see is to pick your OS drive. For most installs this will be on C Drive but could be different on yours.
After selecting OK there will be a delay while the applet scans your hard drive to populate the size and data for the next screen.
This is the main Disk Cleanup dialog and will let you remove files that can be safely deleted. However, in order to clean up old Windows Update files we need to take it one step further and click on the “Clean up system files” button which is highlighted in the below image.
Once again you have to select your OS hard drive like you did in the first step above and click OK. The utility will scan your hard drive again for the information to populate the next screen.
Now we are back at the main Disk Cleanup dialog but there are now a few more entries available for cleanup. The one you see selected in the image below is the one we want for this process – Windows Update Cleanup. Once you have selected that one, which was selected by default when I ran the utility, click the OK button.
You will get a confirmation dialog so just click Delete Files to remove the Windows Update files.
After clicking OK you will once again see the Disk Cleanup dialog which shows you the process of the files being removed.
Once it has completed the clean up task there is no pomp and circumstance or confirmation dialog – it simply disappears off screen to indicate the process is complete.
