Windows 11 is accidentally wasting up to 500GB of your PC’s storage

Developer July 7, 2026No Comments

A bizarre Windows 11 issue is causing a single, bloated folder to swallow massive amounts of storage. In extreme cases, the folder can balloon up to 500GB. Others have seen dozens of gigabytes eaten up by the folder.

A file called “CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal” is the culprit. Windows Latest took a deep dive into the situation and Microsoft has addressed that file with a recent update.

Capability Access Manager is related to granting apps permissions, such as letting an app know your location or giving an app permission to use your PC’s camera. The CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file can grow to be large, though eating up 500GB of storage is not an intended behavior. That’s the size of that file for one Reddit user. Others have lost a similar amount of storage to the bloated file.

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It appears that Windows 11 is wrongfully logging repeated events for access and then storing that information. Capability Access Manager is supposed to store large amounts of data, but it should store items more efficiently.

July’s Patch Tuesday update should fix the issue. You can push the fix right away by installing an optional update.

A Microsoft support document outlines all the improvements rolling out normally (emphasis added):

[Secure Boot] With this update, Windows quality updates include additional high confidence device targeting data, increasing coverage of devices eligible to automatically receive new Secure Boot certificates. Devices receive the new certificates only after demonstrating sufficient successful update signals, maintaining a controlled and phased rollout.
[Authentication] This update improves Netlogon secure channel connections between domain controllers, enabling successful connections from member servers to domain controllers set up before 2025.
[Emoji Panel Update] The emoji panel (Windows key + period (.)) now uses GIPHY for GIF content following the deprecation of Google’s Tenor API. Starting June 30, 2026, install the latest Windows update to continue using GIFs in the Emoji panel. If you don’t update, you will see a “GIF service is not available” error in the panel. Installing the latest Windows update will restore access to GIFs.
[Networking] This update improves how your device connects to shared network resources. Connections used by apps and system features, such as the NetUseAdd function, now work more reliably, including unauthenticated (null session) connections.
[Recycle Bin (known issue)] Fixed: This update addresses an issue where the confirmation dialog might display an internal Recycle Bin file name instead of the original file name when permanently deleting a file. This issue might occur after installing the June 2026 security update (KB5094126).
[Storage] This update improves disk space usage for the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file.
[Taskbar] This update improves notification badge display across your apps. Notification counts and badge visuals now update correctly, helping you stay up to date with new activity.

The change log notes the issue related to the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file, but it does not go into much detail.

It is possible to delete the folder containing the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file, but you have to be careful. If you delete just the file or erase the wrong item, you could break your PC’s Wi-Fi connectivity.

A Reddit user deleted the file and was no longer able to connect to Wi-Fi. In their case, removing the folder and restarting their PC fixed the issue.

If your PC works well and you have enough space for your everyday workflow, you don’t have to do anything right away. You can simply wait for the fix to roll out next month.