Wednesday, October 6, 2010

C:/Windows/Installer directory overflowing bug?

DISCLAIMER: I accept no liability for the content of this post, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. Use this solution at your own risk. This is a solution which worked on my system and may / may not work on others.

Hi all. Recently was bugged by the problem of my C: getting used up erratically. Everyday i'd remove some application and free space and lo! Next morning again <20MB space left on this drive.
I used the following tool to figure out the problem:
Free Disk Analyzer from http://www.extensoft.com/
Saw that the folder C:/Windows/Installer took up almost 80% of the space!
Initially thought of deleting several files at random but then read in forums that this approach is definitely not advisable. In many forums I was redirected to this page: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301 but as it says, they've removed the installer from here.  This utility, however, can still be download from http://majorgeeks.com/Windows_Installer_CleanUp_Utility_d4459.html. INSTALL IT. Do not go and run this utility from its GUI since it doesn't give the option of removing only 'orphaned' installer packages - which is what we want to do. So, fire your command prompt, cd to C:\Program Files\Windows Installer Clean Up and run : msizap g!


PS: Cleaned up 16GB of space in 10 sec!