The July Patch Tuesday update from Microsoft has been a significant release, addressing a record number of security vulnerabilities and introducing new features.
However, one bug in particular has caught the attention of Windows 11 users, causing storage space to run low even when there is sufficient free space available.
The issue lies with the Capability Access Manager bug, which affects the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file.
This file, linked to the Windows service Capability Access Manager, is responsible for app permissions in Windows, but on some PCs, it has grown to several hundred GBs, causing storage space to run low.
Fortunately, Microsoft has released a fix with update KB5101650, which should work immediately after installation.
The patch notes from Microsoft are brief, stating only that the update improves disk space usage for the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file.
However, users who had installed the optional June update report that their file was still large even after the update, suggesting that the fix may not automatically reduce the size of the WAL file.
To check whether your WAL file has been reduced in size, you can use the Windows Command Prompt with administrator rights to run the following command:
robocopy "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager" "%TEMP%\CAMCheck" /L /B /R:0 /W:0 /BYTES /NP
Alternatively, you can use an external tool such as WizTree, TreeSize, or WinDirStat to search for the “CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal” file and check its size.
If the file is several GB large, you should delete the file using the recommended procedure to avoid any potential problems.
