Won't even need to stop the service, as long as you don't plan on removing those updates, then there is no harm in deleting the SoftwareUpdates folder.

If the Windows folder is too big on your Windows 11/10 computer, use the suggestions provided in this article to decrease its size and free up disk space. By default, the Windows operating system is ...

Windows Update error 0x800736cc in Windows 11/10 occurs due to corruption in Windows Update components and can usually be fixed by running the built-in Deployment ...