WSUS is using a significant amount of drive space and its cleanup tool fails to clean it up.

Issue: Your WSUS updates and database are taking up a significant amount of disk space.

You tried using the GUI cleanup wizard but it failed with errors or it is crashing each time you run it.

Wsus Cleanup

We have all seen this regardless of your IT support function. Let's face it, it is not going away and you just need to deal with it. Here is some more info what you can try outside of deleting its database and files :)

Steps to resolve the issue:

1. Try PowerShell with admin rights

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -DeclineSupersededUpdates -DeclineExpiredUpdates -CleanupObsoleteComputers -CleanupObsoleteUpdates -CleanupUnneededContentFiles -CompressUpdates

If you get an error stating that a service is not running such as the one below make sure all WSS services are running

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup : The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it

Occasionally, you may need to consider running parts of the cleanup command to prevent failures or server processor utilization going thru the roof.

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup - CleanupObsoleteComputers -CleanupObsoleteUpdates

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -CleanupUnneededContentFiles -CompressUpdates

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -DeclineSupersededUpdates -DeclineExpiredUpdates -CleanupObsoleteComputers -CleanupObsoleteUpdates

If all fails, you can try deleting all files but keep in mind that they will be redownloaded taking bandwidth and filling up the space again, to do that:

1. Stop the Update Services service (net stop wuauserv)

2. In Windows Explorer browse to the WSUSContent folder located in Drive_leter:\Wsus\Wsuscontent

3. Delete all files in the WsusContent folder

4. Start the Update Services service (net start wuauserv)

5. Run the command WSUSUtil.exe RESET

6. Go into WSUS and make sure that all settings are correct and you are not simply recreating the same issue again.