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I used a program (Greatis' StopUpdates10) to stop windows 10 updates for a long time. And I finally decided to restore updates. The system started updating and free disk space went from 35GB to 15GB and updates was only 50% done. So I stopped updates again and used "Disk Cleanup" to remove temporary files, free disk space became 25GB, there was a folder that wasn't there before, the folder was 10GB in size and located directly in the system drive (C:) named "$WINDOWS.~BT".

The problem is it can't be deleted, It requires permission from "trusted installer". I tried the basic windows delete and tried deleting it using CMD and file shredder and none of them worked, I saw solutions about changing permissions in the "Security" tab in the folder's properties, It doesn't even have that tab. Please help.

Thank you.

Edit : I found the solution in this question.

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  • $WINDOWS.~BT likely contains the stagged data for whatever feature update that was going to be installed. The permissions issue is likely connected to whatever system changes StopUpdates10 does to prevent the system from being updated. What might work is downloading the ISO for the current version of Windows 10, and launching setup.exe from within Windows, this will update your system to the current, without downloading numerous cumulative and service updates which are required to be pushed the feature update. Once update you can take ownership of the folder and then delete it.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jun 30, 2022 at 14:59
  • What's the size of your windows temp folder? C:\Windows\Temp
    – Mastaxx
    Commented Jul 1, 2022 at 17:45
  • @Mastaxx it's empty
    – Tech-Tac
    Commented Jul 1, 2022 at 19:08

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First, your system has insufficient free space. Delete unneeded files, use a drive cleanup tool such as Wise Disk Cleaner or an alternative to free up space, and move some of your own data, e.g., photos and videos, to another drive.

Second, repeated stops and starts of updates are likely to damage the OS! At this point, the best choice might be to reinstall the latest version of Windows 10 from ISO, keeping your existing files. That would bring in a slew of intermediate updates with a single installation.

Third, after reinstallation, use any of the cleanup tools to remove some of the leftover installation files, followed by Windows Disk Cleanup, including system files.

Fourth, update the reinstalled OS..

Fifth, if you need more room, use DISM to reset the base OS, which will prevent rollback but removes some files from WinSxS folder.

After that, keep it updated, at least to add security patches.

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