Help with full C drive

I need some advice on several related issues surrounding my C drive now becoming full.

1) Windows\installer seems to be the main culprit.  On a 500 GB C drive, Windows\installer and its subfolders are taking up a total of 220 GB.  That's not a misprint; almost half of the C drive is taken up by Windows\installer. 

2) I've tried using the built in disk cleanup tool, but it never finishes.  Sometimes it just hangs.  Other times it will stop with the thermometer bar nowhere complete and propose a few hundred megabytes or maybe 1 or 2 GB in cleaning.

3) I've tried following some tutorials about how to address a disk cleanup not working, but I'm stuck on the step of using sfc /scannow becuase it did find corrupt files which it cannot fix.

So, my questions are

1) can anything in windows\installer be deleted or at least moved to an archive disk without wrecking the system?

2) How do I fix the corrupted files detected by sfc?

 -Related to this, in terms of reading the cbs log, can I assume that the listing of corrupt files is all at the end.  If I scroll to the end, I see some listed there, but the entire logfile is 165 MB, most of it is pages of reporting the that parent to something isn't available.  If the anatomy of the cbs file ensures that the corrupt files is all at the end, that would help me a great deal.

 -I do have some older backup files -- can you simply overwrite the corrupt file with an older one from the backup or is there something more complicated?

 - I do have the original system disks which came with the system.  My concern with using that as a system repair is that I'm going to roll back some necessary patches made over the years and with Win 7 no longer being supported, I won't be able to redo those patches.  Is this something I really need to worry about and if so what is the best procedure for restoring those corrupt files?

Delete. Delete, Delete.     All Drives must have 15% or more Free at all Times.

Start with this it opens Disk Cleanup on the Start Menu since 1995  :  Open a CMD Prompt as a Admin and then copy/paste : %SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:65535 this into it and enter. which opens up the above but cleans more, tick all boxes.

Note : In may seem like it has hung but is still working.    After perhaps 2hrs then would say it is hung but it should still delete files when closed.

Supply the log of : sfc /scannow  CBS.log to where you think the issues are, upload to a respected file share site.

The C:\Windows\Installer folder contains Windows installer cache, it's used to store important files for applications installed using the Windows Installer technology and should not be deleted or moved.

Delete Older Backups.      Video Card : Check the AMD Folder and delete all but the last 2 installers.  NVIDIA is harder.

Worse case download and run Ccleaner which is never recommended here.

- Need to actually step away and take a look at the system and what year we are in.   There is nothing that is worth keeping when running a system that should not be out on the internet. You are a danger to everyone out here as well as your friends and family.

- Linux Mint Cinnamon : Most like Windows : https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php   Check Videos out : Here.

It comes with Software and tons available : https://alternativeto.net/platform/linux/    Use main page to find Alternatives to programs you have.
f you have Linux questions visit BC's Linux Forum on the 1st page of the Forum here . Tutorials  and experts that know all about it.


 

Edited by Pkshadow, 06 August 2025 - 12:56 PM.

Hi,

To Cleanup the Windows Installer folder check this tool: https://www.homedev.com.au/free/patchcleaner#tabs-4 everything related with Uninstalled programs can be removed, if you are not sure move the reported files to another HDD as backup just in case you need some file later.

OK, I ran the homedev.com patch cleaner.  It's giving me an error which doesn't make sense to me.  It's giving me a list of files it's expecting to find but not finding.  They look like *.msi files which should be in Windows installer.  The error message says that the 2 possibilities are that the file don't actually exist or that the file exists and patch cleaner can't find it.  It's warning that if the latter possibility is true those files might get incorrectly removed.

I'm not sure how to proceed.

Maybe its related to this!

 

Known Issues

1. Adobe Reader patches are detected incorrectly as orphaned files. As of verson 1.4, PatchCleaner now has an exclusion filter that allows you to filter out the Adobe Acrobat patch files so they can be excluded from the set of orphaned files. The exclusion filters are configurable