How to Delete Pending Updates in Windows 10

Windows 10 often forces users to update to the latest version, but in case you don’t want to then there are few tips you can use to delete the pending updates...

Rahul Verma

Last updated on July 1, 2022

Rahul Verma

Author

Rahul is a Computer Science student with a massive interest in the field of Tech and cryptocurrency topics. He spends most of his time either writing or listening to music or traveling un-seen places. He believes that chocolate is the solution to all his problems. Life happens, and coffee helps.

Windows 10 often forces users to update to the latest version, but in case you don’t want to then there are few tips you can use to delete the pending updates in Windows 10. Via such tricks, you can rest assured about the popup regarding windows updates. Windows 10 comes with a lot of updates, and these updates are meant to fix some security and stability-related issues on your system.

Although these updates are usually huge in size, they have to be downloaded slowly through your internet connection. So if you have a slow or unreliable network, then most of the time, those updates that you download will end up corrupt or incomplete. And the majority of times these updates get corrupted and cause more damage than fixing it.

Luckily these corrupt files and pending updates could be removed from the system, forcing Windows to redownload them freshly. This also can fix issues related to Windows updates. So in this article let’s see how you can delete pending Windows update files, so you don’t have to worry about them in the future.

Method 1: Delete downloaded updates

Windows 10 stores all its downloaded updates into a folder inside the system drive. So if we delete all the contents inside that folder, that would remove all pending update files from your system. So to delete downloaded updates:

Open File Explorer on your PC.
Navigate to this folder or copy and paste into the address bar.
```
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download
```
Now delete all contents inside that folder.

That’s it. You have successfully deleted all pending update files from your PC.

Method 2: Delete the Software distribution folder

Although sometimes deleting the contents inside the Download folder will not be sufficient. In that case, we have to delete the whole software distribution folder in order to remove all pending or corrupt update files. In order to do so,

Open a Command prompt or Powershell window as an administrator. (Shortcut Windows Key + X, then press A)
Now type in the following commands one by one.
```
net stop wuauserv
```
```
net stop bits
```
Once it is done, don’t close the PowerShell or CMD window and open the file explorer.
Now go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and delete all contents within the folder.
Once you delete all files, go to the PowerShell window and type in the following commands one by one.
```
net start wuauserv
```
```
net start bits
```
Now close the window, and you have deleted all pending update files from the system.

How to Delete Pending Updates in Windows 10