Windows 10 to eat even more disk space as ‘reserved storage’ for updates

The saga of Windows 10 updates continues. Following on from the disaster of the October 2018 update that failed on some machines and the controversy of opting some unknowing users into beta testing, the newest version of updates will require more of your computer’s storage space than before. According to a blog post by Microsoft program manager Jesse Rajwan, the next major update of Windows 10 will change the way in which the operating system manages disk space so that updates will always be able to occur automatically. The new system will set aside some disk space as “reserved storage” to be used by updates as well as apps, temporary files, and system caches. The concern is particularly on the disk space required for installing updates, as the blog post says that “when it’s time for an update, the temporary unneeded OS files in the reserved storage will be deleted and update will use the full reserve area. This will enable most PCs to download and install an update without having to free up any of your disk space, even when you have minimal free disk space.” While that sounds good, the way that it works is by Windows taking over a chunk of storage space which you cannot use for any other purpose. “The reserved storage cannot be removed from the OS,” the blog post explains. Given that the anticipated size of reserve storage “will start at about 7GB,” that’s a fair chunk of additional space to take up given the fact that Windows 10 can already bloat to use 30GB or more of disk space. Microsoft advises that once the feature is rolled out you can reduce the amount of reserve storage on your device in two ways. Firstly, you can remove optional features from your system by going to Settings > Apps > Apps & features > Manage optional features. Uninstalling features should reduce the amount of space taken up by reserved storage. Secondly, you can remove any installed Windows language packs that you do not need. To do this, go to Settings > Time & Language > Language and select for uninstallation any languages you don’t need, which will also reduce reserved storage. All of this seems like an unnecessary annoyance for Windows users working with limited disk space, and the push towards automatic updates will not go down well as long as the stability of updates continues to be a problem. Microsoft has announced that support for Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 will end this year on October 14, as reported by The Verge. This is also the end-of-support date for Windows 10 as a whole, but the move is still a little surprising considering that Microsoft is now offering the Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) Program. Anyone who joins this program for $30 can continue to safely use Windows 10 for a whole extra year — so you might think that Microsoft would let them continue to use the Office apps too. That said, it’s not like the apps will disappear, they just won’t receive any more updates. According to Microsoft, this could cause “performance and reliability issues over time” but whether these issues will pop up within the ESU program’s duration or not is anyone’s guess. Microsoft has once again temporarily halted the rollout of its latest major Windows 11 update, also known as 24H2. This time it is for systems running select Ubisoft games following widespread user reports of crashes and performance issues. The affected titles include Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Common complaints include black screens, freezing, and unresponsiveness during gameplay or while loading these titles. “I just bought a new gaming laptop with RTX 4080, Intel i9 14900hx. I can’t play the game (Origins) even for 5 minutes because it crashes to a black screen, with audio, and the only way to close it is from task manager. Impossible to play,” one user shared on Reddit. Others reported similar frustrations, citing the persistent error “NTDLL.dll” that renders their games unplayable. The Windows 11 24H2 update had already been giving users a real headache with problems such as bugs for visual layouts and flaws for certain wallpaper apps. And now, as Microsoft confirms in a support document, some people without administrative privileges can’t change the time zone in the Date & Time view, among myriad other issues related to the important Windows 11 update. A Feedback Hub post also reports a time issue after exiting Sleep Mode, specifically after about one out of every five overnight sleep cycles. There is also a report that the time is not syncing correctly following daylight saving time. Put differently, the update doesn’t break the time zone, but only affects the toggle or makes it very difficult to modify it.