C:// shenanigans
Current mood:  dorky

Gonna make a quick reference on how to clear your C drive bcus I had some trouble figuring out what to do

Since windows 7 is no longer supported, I figured I might as well upgrade my pc to windows 10. Originally, my plan was to build a whole new pc, since the C drive was so stuffed I wasn't sure if it could fit win10 on it. My C drive is a 64 GB Sandisk SSD, and at some points I only had about 500 MB free space left! 
I had already tried the two most obvious solutions at this point, running Disk Cleaner (right click on the drive, go to Properties and click on "disk cleaner") and CCleaner (a third party program that can be downloaded), which only managed to free up an extra GB or so. 
So who is the culprit? I decided to check out a few folders on the C drive. The biggest folders would make the greatest difference, right?
On my C drive, I found a folder called "Windows", which was about 20 GB, Two folders called "Program files" and "Program files x86", each about 4 or 5 GB, a folder called "Users", 12 GB, and some folders whose names were randomized strings of letters and numbers. 
I started with the Windows folder. It quickly became clear that this is the kind of folder that you shouldn't mess around in if you don't know what you're doing, it seemed to contain the files that literally keep windows running. It would explain the folder name. I googled the folder and whether something could be removed or not. It turns out, there is a folder called "SoftwareDistribution", where all updates that have been downloaded end up in. Even when the updates have been installed, those files remain. So, I empties the contents of the "Download" folder within the SoftwareDistribution folder (don't delete the folder itself, windows doesn't like that). 
I noticed that the files in this folder had the same randomized strings of letters and numbers for names as the folder I came across earlier in my purging adventure. The free space on my C drive had gone from 1 GB to 7.5 GB, it wouldn't hurt to try, would it? 
So I deleted those folders too. Bam, 12.5 GB of free space (I needed 8 GB to install win10). 

moral of the story: it can't hurt to delete update folders once in a while. 

P.S. win10 can still be downloaded for free, if you have a key for win7 or 8. There is a tool you can download from microsoft's website, that either installs win10 directly on the device, or lets you create installation media.