Can i safely delete windows installer files

It would be real nice to free up over 20 GB on my machine. I would like to inform you that, it is not recommended to delete Windows Installer Patch Files. If the installer cache has been compromised, you may not immediately see problems until you perform an action such as uninstall, repair, or update on a product. These files are required for uninstalling and updating applications. Missing files cannot be copied between machines since they are unique.

If you do not have enough space on c: drive, you may try the below suggestions: a. Move the download folder to another drive. Empty recycle bin c. Uninstall the applications that you no more use. Perform disk cleanup, refer the below links. Those files should be no longer needed and can be deleted. The problem is identifying them because just deleting any MSI or MSP file is a bad idea as it could be required for updating, patching, or uninstalling existing applications.

Below is an MSP file from an old installation of Microsoft Office even though that version of Office was uninstalled from the system some time ago. Patch Cleaner is specifically designed to clean redundant files from the Installer folder and the tool actually took its inspiration from this very article! Attribution to Raymond. Both portable and installer versions are available.

Simply launch the tool and it will run a scan and show the results in the window of what has been found. The files still used result is what it believes should be kept and the orphaned files are what can be removed because they are no longer required by any installed software. That way, if you run into a problem, you still have a backup as this process is by no means foolproof.

Use the Browse button to locate a destination folder. Patch Cleaner requires. NET Framework 4. NET versions include it. One of the old tools that could do this was MsiZap which was developed by Microsoft. Microsoft discontinued both MsiZap and Msicuu some time ago after saying they were causing too many issues, but many users still use MsiZap with some success.

The G command tells the program to remove any orphaned cached Windows Installer data files. While testing we got an error on both Windows 7 and XP similar to the following although it did say it had cleared some orphaned files out. MsiZapInfo: Performing operations for user S Removing orphaned cached files.

Error enumerating Products key for S user. Error: 6. All the entries that show in the window are orphaned files and manually check the boxes for what you want to delete. Although it has no option to automatically select all files for deletion, you can use the Shift key to multi-select, i. It would have been useful if this tool offered an option to backup the unused files instead of deleting them in case of any potential problems. Note the website is in Japanese. Download WICleanup.

Heath Stewart over at blogs. I used Patch Cleaner on my Windows 8. This week I noticed that I was no longer receiving updates for Office On my Windows 10 machine with Office , 8 updates were installed.

I manually downloaded these 8 individual Office updates released in August , and tried to install them offline. After some searching I remembered having run Patch Cleaner. So I reverted the machine back to the state before running Patch Cleaner, and ran Windows Update again. Now all 10 Office updates from July and August did show up in the list of available patches. My opinion: Patch Cleaner may have recovered 6 GB of storage, but it did more harm than good.

This was awesome. Only 6 files were needed. This helped. Every time I try to download Patch Cleaner, I get an error message that setup cannot continue until all system components have been successfully installed. Patch Cleaner is the obvious solution here. I freed up If so, then it should be safe to delete them permanently! Great article, thank you! Used WiCleanup along with WiMsps. Whilst WiCleanup identified all of the potential files, it also had those on the list which WiMsps said to keep.

It takes a bit of time, but worth the effort. I managed to free up 25GB of space. Thanks for this info. I went with WICleanup. I have been fighting with low disk space for months. I had 40 gig in the installer folder. Lots of clicking but I have space to work now.

Windows version failed on installation. WiCleaner worked flawlessly. Cleaned up 29 GB in 10 minutes. Thank you for your informative article! Thank you very much sir, really good and helpful article with clear instructions.

I found unused files taking up 50,8GB …imagine, I had to hit yes and ok for every single file to get rid of it! Absolutely worth it! Many thanks. My experience mirrored that of Maros. Very helpful and straightforward instructions. Thank you. Lol I like how the main article has no mention of Patch Cleaner, but the comment section have hijacked it by only talking about Patch Cleaner.

Patch Cleaner was actually only in development for about 9 months. PatchCleaner worked like a charm, 20 GB cleaned. I moved the files to an external hard drive just in case but damn! WICleanup was a rather awkward and clunky to use, but it definitely did find a lot of orphan files on my machine and allowed me to delete them.

Thanks for this article. Patch Cleaner found 45 GB of orphans! Why all the cumbersome solutions? Your solution is vastly more cumbersome than all of these, they are free and only take a matter of seconds to find what they are looking for.

Your solution is paying for software and then waiting an hour for it to complete its task! After using Patch Cleaner be prepared for an extremely long boot. I think mine is busy now for half an hour or so, though not stuck yet…. I have had to really scour my brain to remember all my old VAX commands when using the command prompt, so any suggestions will be most gratefully received. For nearly a year I have been working with a margin of about 3 GBs of space on my hard drive, it was so frustrating!

To have this problem solved is fantastic. Total disk usage was 61 GB, meaning over half my files were garbage!!! Good job Patch Cleaner! After doing some research, I realised that the Windows Installer sub-folder was the main culprit 28GB in size!

However, it took me hours of research and banging my head against a brick wall , before stumbling across the positive feedback here for PatchCleaner. During application install, update of the application or application removal, this directory is used by the application to confirm the existence of previously installed items to determine the next steps the installer needs to take. The overall idea that you really should not remove items in the Windows directory.

We build and test our software based on the existence of specific files and directories. When those files and directories don't exist, bad things can and will happen. However, that is a generalization that usually upsets many people so let's be more specific. The proper way to alleviate space pressure in this directory is to uninstall any unneeded applications. If you want to remove applications, use the Control Panel Programs and Features to uninstall them.

It is also possible to run Disk Cleanup cleanmgr. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 3 years ago. Active 3 years ago. Viewed 45k times. Improve this question. Community Bot 1. Christian Burgos Christian Burgos 1 1 gold badge 2 2 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges. No; Those files should not be deleted — Ramhound.