After upgrading to Windows 8.1, you may experience failures trying to install updates via Windows Update or any third-party application installer/updater.
This happened on my Surface Pro after upgrading from Windows 8.1 Pro Preview to the RTM version and I couldn’t get two particular Windows Updates to install and Adobe wouldn’t install updates to the Creative Suite. The Adobe Updater was helpful and actually reported the error very clearly:
The disk was full
Apparently the upgrade process keeps the old version of Windows installed. fortunately, removing it is fairly easy.
Removing the old version of Windows is fairly easy:
- Press WIN-Q to launch the search bar
- Type “Clean” and hit enter; Tap “settings” if you’re not already on that tab
- Select “Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files”. This will launch the disk cleanup utility that should be very familiar from Windows 7, Vista, and even XP.
- Click the “Clean Up System Files” button
- Scroll down a bit in the list of options and you’ll see “Previous Windows installation(s).” Make sure the checkbox next to that item is selected.
- Click the OK button
This freed up a little over 18GB on my surface which was plenty to install those remaining updates and further optimize the disk.