Personally, I have never seen this many issues with Windows like today. Even way back in the Windows Vista days. Woah, Windows Vista will be 20 years old in November…
If you are forced to still be on Windows 11.
This file can be found in the following directory,
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager\
Then see if it shows a huge file size.
Windows Latest found that one particular file called “CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal” can use most of your system storage.
If your PC is affected, the safest fix is to install Windows 11 KB5095093 from Windows Update, or wait for the July 2026 Patch Tuesday update, where the fix is expected to roll out automatically.
Good information. However, the safest fix would be to delete the OS and install literally anything else (https://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/). But alas, due to work constraints I understand some are stuck with Windows.
Literally says “if you are forced to use win 11” but ya saw an opportunity to be sanctimonious and positively leapt upon it.
Can you imagine the downvotes and likely bans if someone did the equivalent in a Linux thread?
Ah, but Linux is faultless, so no such thread could ever happen.
The fortunate thing with “windows because of work constraints” is that this is a work problem. Not a me problem.
Exactly. Sadly I need windows on my laptop for college which is voluntary, so I’m stuck with it until I’m done.
You mean voluntary in the sense that college is voluntary? By a similar logic, so is work?
Dual boot?
I had the same problem when I was in university. My concern with dual booting was if something went wrong, such as a bad windows update borking the bootloader. I didn’t have easy access to a second device and I couldn’t afford downtime during the term. There are also issues around clock sync or bios updates, and if you NEED windows for one course then its a pain to switch back and forth all day. Finally there are the unknown unknowns, I was new to Linux at the time and didn’t know what could go wrong.
I made do with WSL and switched over when I graduated. Looking back, I probably could have switched much sooner, but I get the concern
Your school didn’t have computer labs? Ours had a bunch that were nearly always empty with all the software you would need for every course. I used them just because the screens were more comfortable than a laptop and it was often quiet in there.
That’s where I was at with it too. I have a desktop which is thankfully Linux and will stay that way, but I figured it was too much effort to have a half Linux/half microslop laptop too. I’ll just suffer with a bad laptop until I finish my degree.
VM?
Luckily my work still lets me use Win10 for as long as they give safety updates. Unfortunately for me, it‘s still Windows.
I really wanna install Linux on my surface pro X :(
Perhaps read about all the garbage Linux puts out. -They don’t do the testing, QA, or slow roll outs that Windows does.
It’s kinda scary how they let just any old idiot use the internet.
I’ll have what he’s smoking.
Pass me whatever you’re on mate
Lol
Can you not? I’ve installed linux on surface laptops before. Would have thought it’d be the same for their tabtops.
Nah, x is the weird Arm based one. I wonder if I could at least donate money or my device for the cause.
Darn, I was thinking the Arm processor might have caused it. I think the surface laptop 6 is arm based. I wonder if that’d have the same problem.
Misread the inflection on “Can you not?” and snorted
Same, I felt attacked for a second there.
I was genuinely curious! I’d never attack someone randomly online like that.
Ya idiot.
I messed up with one computer. It is a huge server with RAID on Windows 11 and like 100TB’s of storage on it… No way I was going to risk it and accidentally erase the used storage while installing Linux. That is the only one on Windows 11 for me. If it was just 5TB’s or something, I would just get an external hard drive to copy everything. But it is much more than that, not all of the 100TB’s is used though. It has to sit on Windows 11.
Don’t worry. Windows will auto update or update your storage driver and you will loose the data anyway! Good luck while it lasts.
Disconnect the drives and insert a new one and install Linux. Then reconnect the drives.
Or just unplug the SAS cable or whatever, depending on the hardware.
That sounds like a problem that you should deal with even if you stay on Windows 😄 Maybe I just enjoy organizing things
Do you have over 60TB’s of storage that you need like me?
Well, is horse porn a want or a need?
I do not and so I shouldn’t be one to judge
Is it data that could be recovered if needed? That’s where my concern is coming from. Not being able to back it up to fix OS issues might mean that you can’t back it up at all
Over 60,000 GB’s. As stated, it is all in RAID. Unless I get a giant external one. Which I don’t even know if that exists to buy. It would be super expensive if so.
Not talking here about Linux anymore. If you have the data in only one site, and the data is irreplaceable, you have a problem right now. Having it in a RAID gives you some breathing room, but you still should plan and execute a remote backup, somehow. At least for the really critical data. Fire, floods and other phenomena are hard or impossible to predict, and you could lose everything. If it’s not that critical, and you simply don’t want the hassle of moving 60TB, I can really empathize with that.