Industry observers note that as part of the July Patch Tuesday patch, Microsoft not only fixed a record number of security vulnerabilities and rolled out some fresh functions, but also patched a fresh bug that caused Windows 11 to waste up to 500 GB of storage space.
The report highlights that a fault in the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file causes the system drive to grow increasingly full. This file is linked to the Windows service Capability Access Manager, which in turn is responsible for app permissions in Windows. The file should normally only take up a few MB of storage, but on some PCs it amounts to several hundred GBs. The Capability Access Manager bug in question can cause storage space to run low on Windows 11 PCs even when there’s sufficient free space available.
As part of the ongoing story, unlike the fresh functions in the patch, this fix should work immediately after installation—no gradual rollout. In the patch notes, Microsoft’s entry regarding the bug is remarkably terse:. With patch KB5101650, Microsoft has fixed this problem.
According to the latest update, [Storage] This patch improves disk space usage for the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file.
In a fresh development, according to Windows Current, users who had installed the optional June patch reported that their file was still large even after the patch and only returned to normal after they had deleted it manually. Microsoft doesn’t say whether a WAL file that has already grown to several hundred GBs will be automatically reduced in size.
In a fresh development, to do this, enter the following in the Windows Command Prompt with administrator rights:. So, after installing patch KB5101650, you should check whether your WAL file is still large or has shrunk down.
Industry observers note that robocopy "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager" "%TEMP%\CAMCheck" /L /B /R:0 /W:0 /BYTES /NP.
According to the latest update, if it’s several GB large, you should delete the file using the method described here. (Deleting the file in a way that does not follow the recommended procedure may cause problems.) If the file is only a few hundred KB or a few MB in size, then everything is fine. Alternatively, use an external tool such as WizTree, TreeSize, or WinDirStat to search for the “CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal” file and check its size.
In a fresh development, this article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
As part of the ongoing story, he has been writing on almost all IT topics for around 25 years, covering everything from news to reviews and buying guides. Hans-Christian Dirscherl began his IT life with Autoexec.bat and config.sys, Turbo-Pascal and C, Sinix and Wordperfect.