Clean up Extremely bloated (27GB+) C:/WINDOWS/installer folder

[Galt]

What I indicate in my other posts can be done, without harm and with a bit of care.

Also, messing with a system with 2% space left is a hazard in itself as there is NO place to put the deleted files without possibly loading the drive to a full crash point. That means they need to be permanently removed not just put in the recycle bin, since you seem adverse to doing a backup before you start.

I only had a minute when I posted last and just wanted to comment on the xp_remove_hotfix_backup utility. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had done a disk clean up. I tried to defrag but the drive is too full to do it effectively. I did not know about the "detect and repair" option in office but I will try it. My intention all along (and I have already spoken with my son about this) was to eliminate uneeded programs and files. I am a big believer in backups. On my computer I have several partitions that are easy to back up (OS,Program Files, Data, Games, etc.). I use Drive Image to backup-love it. Just because I didn't mention it doesn't mean I wasn't going to do it. I'm still trying to come up with a plan and it would be nice to know why this happened so steps can be taken to prevent it happening again. If I could have successfully run the "msizap.exe G! " utility it would have identified the orphans so I could delete just the uneeded ones but no such luck. Finances are probably going to preclude him buying a second hard drive at this point. I started reading "What files can I safely delete in Windows Explorer?" and I'm thru 3+ pages (of 9)so far it either wasn't relevent or I already knew it but I will read it all. CC Cleaner is free so I will download it and check it out. Tune up Utilities is a little too pricy(I'd buy a 2nd HD before that). I appreciate all the suggestions and will probably utilize most of them. Thanks,

Urge

Understood:

1. Get rid of the installer and installer files. that will cleanup needed room. Reboot after each deletion.

2.Run check disk on the drive and after the deletions (It will do it on reboot)

3. Tuneup utilities has a "trial version" at the bottom of the link I provided, utilize the tools provided.

4. Use a program Uninstaller to remove any unneeded programs. http://www.ursoftware.com/

it also has a 21 day trial use, fully functional, and will remove unneeded registry entry's along with the program and 99 % of the unneeded folders.

5. Run an anti-virus check on line or use Avast it's free, and stay away from Norton's, McCafee or others "suites." http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

6. Run Spybot Search & Destroy free and Adaware free.

7. That drive can be defragged even at 2% full. Use this: or after the uninstaller and installer folders are removed either way. http://www.majorgeeks.com/O&O_Defrag_2...tion_d4545.html

8 From what your saying and have indicated there is no reason you can't free up enough room to get out of trouble.

9. As Charlotte said, invest in a second HD they are dirt cheap now. http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD

10. Good luck and I trust success.

[spacesurfer]

Probably the best advice that hasn't been mentioned yet might be to reinstall everything from scratch. You'll have a fresh install that will be much faster. Good luck with activation.

[Urge]

It appears that most of the installer/uninstaller files that are taking up 27GB+ in C:/WINDOWS/installer are associated with office 2003. If I uninstall Office will that get rid of all those files in the process? I can set the recycle bin to remove the files immediately. Even if it doesn't I can then just delete them yes/no? I know there must be other installer/uninstaller files in the folder (I haven't found any yet but there are 1800 files) but it is a reasonably quick process to scan over them with the mouse and see what they are associated with.

Galt...Understood:

1. Get rid of the installer and installer files. that will cleanup needed room. Reboot after each deletion.

Are you saying I should reboot after each of the 1800 files? Galt, I implemented most of your suggestions (thanks-went from less than 1.5GB free space to 4.4GB) but the crux of the problem is getting the installer/uninstaller files off. If I could get msizap.exe G!( the G! is a wildcard) to run it supposedly will just identify the orphan files but I have not been able to do this. My knowledge of and experience with DOS commands is limited. I'll have to read up on it some more. The positive in all this is that I learn more about the nuts and bolts of computing and that's kinda cool.

70GB HD- Windows 32GB, Program Files 10GB, music 14.5GB, everything else 10GB, free 4GB+. I am trying to convince him to burn the music and get it off but he apparently just uses the computer for entertainment and is reluctant to do this. He doesn't have or can't locate the winXP media edition OS disk or I would reinstall. He may find it this week-we'll see.

Urge

[Mike Rumble]

A short term solution for freeing up some space, provided you have at least 2 GB of RAM installed, would be to turn off and delete the pagefile.sys. On my system, for example, it frees up 1.88 GB of space, and I have not noticed any difference in performance. If you want to try this, you might check out the instructions found here:

http://www.techmixer.com/pagefilesys-how-t...s-from-windows/

Keep in mind, it's only a temporary fix. Most people who run out of disk space usually just continue to fill up the reclaimed space and then they're stuck again.

Mike Rumble

[Octopuss]

Honestly, if you went for backing up the documents, mails etc. and reinstalled the whole **** computer, it would take MUCH less time than figuring out which mess is which And in fact, if it got to such point to have enormous amounts of crap in for example the installer folder, it's apparently time for a reinstall anyway!

I would make a list of what's in the start menu and then just run all of the .msi files in each of the folders in installer one, seeing which is no longer used. Windows have a bad habit of keeping everything...

And the hotfix backup folders in root of \windows are absolutely safe to delete.

[kgee]

Are you saying I should reboot after each of the 1800 files? Galt, I implemented most of your suggestions (thanks-went from less than 1.5GB free space to 4.4GB) but the crux of the problem is getting the installer/uninstaller files off. If I could get msizap.exe G!( the G! is a wildcard) to run it supposedly will just identify the orphan files but I have not been able to do this. My knowledge of and experience with DOS commands is limited. I'll have to read up on it some more. The positive in all this is that I learn more about the nuts and bolts of computing and that's kinda cool.

msizap.exe would not identify any orphan MSI/MSP file ; it's meant to cleanup the registry and not the harddisk... quite the opposite of your objective ?

You asked for DOS commands ? hmm ?

Here is a tested and working batch that will cleanup orphaned MSI/MSP files (i've just made it, and it found 6 MSP to delete on my disk -- thank you for the idea). Additionaly it will delete any TMP files, so be sure to run the batch after a clean reboot, or when you have no installation/uninstallation pending.

Important : no backup is made. but you may replace the del/f/a/q command by a move one...

@REM ***** copy/paste this in a file named "CleanMSIP.cmd" then run it *****
@echo off
REM go to the mess
cd/d %systemroot%\Installer
REM get all available info from registry
reg export HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData UD.reg
REM convert Unicode to ASCII and keep only lines containing .ms?
type UD.reg | findstr/ri "\.ms." >> UD.txt
REM for each file in the folder, check if it's in the list, and delete (only) if not
for %%i in (*.msi *.msp) do ( findstr/i %%i UD.txt 1>nul || del/f/a/q %%i )
REM delete some temporary and no more needed files
del/f/a UD.reg UD.txt *.tmp

Note you need full read/write access to the Installer folder...

The abstract is to get the list of the registered (thus valid) MSI/MSP files from the registry, then to identify which files from the disk are not in the list.

As a consequence, this batch will only clean the Installer folder, leaving any subfolder untouched. You may modify it to compare the subfolders names with the contents of UD.reg to find orphaned folders.

PS: about Office : i don't know the exact process of updates, service packs and hotfixes that may be applied to your son's computer ; but, if it was mine, i would :

1/ uninstall Office

2/ reboot

3/ run the above batch

4/ use a dice to decide between the two solutions below :

5a/ go to www.openoffice.org

5b/ reinstall MSOffice, go to office update site, install first the latest service pack, then any other fix

Anyway, running the step n°3 may be enough pain...

good luck

Edited October 29, 2008 by kgee

[Alex44]

Before you buy a new drive try this

http://www.ccleaner.com/

It free'd up about 18gigs on my old box.

[Tripredacus]

Are you saying I should reboot after each of the 1800 files? Galt, I implemented most of your suggestions (thanks-went from less than 1.5GB free space to 4.4GB) but the crux of the problem is getting the installer/uninstaller files off. If I could get msizap.exe G!( the G! is a wildcard) to run it supposedly will just identify the orphan files but I have not been able to do this. My knowledge of and experience with DOS commands is limited. I'll have to read up on it some more. The positive in all this is that I learn more about the nuts and bolts of computing and that's kinda cool.

msizap.exe would not identify any orphan MSI/MSP file ; it's meant to cleanup the registry and not the harddisk... quite the opposite of your objective ?

You asked for DOS commands ? hmm ?

Here is a tested and working batch that will cleanup orphaned MSI/MSP files (i've just made it, and it found 6 MSP to delete on my disk -- thank you for the idea). Additionaly it will delete any TMP files, so be sure to run the batch after a clean reboot, or when you have no installation/uninstallation pending.

Important : no backup is made. but you may replace the del/f/a/q command by a move one...

@REM ***** copy/paste this in a file named "CleanMSIP.cmd" then run it *****
@echo off
REM go to the mess
cd/d %systemroot%\Installer
REM get all available info from registry
reg export HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData UD.reg
REM convert Unicode to ASCII and keep only lines containing .ms?
type UD.reg | findstr/ri "\.ms." >> UD.txt
REM for each file in the folder, check if it's in the list, and delete (only) if not
for %%i in (*.msi *.msp) do ( findstr/i %%i UD.txt 1>nul || del/f/a/q %%i )
REM delete some temporary and no more needed files
del/f/a UD.reg UD.txt *.tmp

Note you need full read/write access to the Installer folder...

The abstract is to get the list of the registered (thus valid) MSI/MSP files from the registry, then to identify which files from the disk are not in the list.

As a consequence, this batch will only clean the Installer folder, leaving any subfolder untouched. You may modify it to compare the subfolders names with the contents of UD.reg to find orphaned folders.

PS: about Office : i don't know the exact process of updates, service packs and hotfixes that may be applied to your son's computer ; but, if it was mine, i would :

1/ uninstall Office

2/ reboot

3/ run the above batch

4/ use a dice to decide between the two solutions below :

5a/ go to www.openoffice.org

5b/ reinstall MSOffice, go to office update site, install first the latest service pack, then any other fix

Anyway, running the step n°3 may be enough pain...

good luck

I'd say using a coin would let you reach a decision faster in step 4.

[kgee]

4/ use a dice to decide between the two solutions below :

5a/ go to www.openoffice.org

5b/ reinstall MSOffice, go to office update site, install first the latest service pack, then any other fix

I'd say using a coin would let you reach a decision faster in step 4.

Rolling a dice (of six, or twelve, or even twenty faces) lets you add any other "Office" suite to my list, including for example google, or zoho.com, or really any other.

My post was no more than a quick-and-(as-you-may-have-noted)-dirty method to get rid of msizap.

And that "dumb" way seems to work...?

/my2cents

[woolie]

What I indicate in my other posts can be done, without harm and with a bit of care.

Also, messing with a system with 2% space left is a hazard in itself as there is NO place to put the deleted files without possibly loading the drive to a full crash point. That means they need to be permanently removed not just put in the recycle bin, since you seem adverse to doing a backup before you start.

I only had a minute when I posted last and just wanted to comment on the xp_remove_hotfix_backup utility. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had done a disk clean up. I tried to defrag but the drive is too full to do it effectively. I did not know about the "detect and repair" option in office but I will try it. My intention all along (and I have already spoken with my son about this) was to eliminate uneeded programs and files. I am a big believer in backups. On my computer I have several partitions that are easy to back up (OS,Program Files, Data, Games, etc.). I use Drive Image to backup-love it. Just because I didn't mention it doesn't mean I wasn't going to do it. I'm still trying to come up with a plan and it would be nice to know why this happened so steps can be taken to prevent it happening again. If I could have successfully run the "msizap.exe G! " utility it would have identified the orphans so I could delete just the uneeded ones but no such luck. Finances are probably going to preclude him buying a second hard drive at this point. I started reading "What files can I safely delete in Windows Explorer?" and I'm thru 3+ pages (of 9)so far it either wasn't relevent or I already knew it but I will read it all. CC Cleaner is free so I will download it and check it out. Tune up Utilities is a little too pricy(I'd buy a 2nd HD before that). I appreciate all the suggestions and will probably utilize most of them. Thanks,

Urge

Understood:

1. Get rid of the installer and installer files. that will cleanup needed room. Reboot after each deletion.

2.Run check disk on the drive and after the deletions (It will do it on reboot)

3. Tuneup utilities has a "trial version" at the bottom of the link I provided, utilize the tools provided.

4. Use a program Uninstaller to remove any unneeded programs. http://www.ursoftware.com/

it also has a 21 day trial use, fully functional, and will remove unneeded registry entry's along with the program and 99 % of the unneeded folders.

5. Run an anti-virus check on line or use Avast it's free, and stay away from Norton's, McCafee or others "suites." http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

6. Run Spybot Search & Destroy free and Adaware free.

7. That drive can be defragged even at 2% full. Use this: or after the uninstaller and installer folders are removed either way. http://www.majorgeeks.com/O&O_Defrag_2...tion_d4545.html

8 From what your saying and have indicated there is no reason you can't free up enough room to get out of trouble.

9. As Charlotte said, invest in a second HD they are dirt cheap now. http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=HDD

10. Good luck and I trust success.

thank you very much... get another hard drive works for me, too...