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Solved: Similar issue with Windows 2003 Server

671 views 1 reply 1 participant last post by  khabecker 
#1 ·
This post was intended to be a reply to "Hard drive nearly full for no apparent reason" but has ended up as a separate thread.

I seem to have a similar issue. I've discovered that my Windows\Installer folder is over 29GB. Nearly all of the space is used by about 3000 .msp files that have nine distinct dates beginning 10/8/2008 and ending 12/9/2009. On 8 of the dates all the files are identical in size. One one of the dates there are files of two different sizes. 12/9 is around when I first noticed space problems on the drive and began working on it. Deleting logs, compressing unused files, has kept space available until now. Because the Installer folder is hidden I didn't notice it size until yesterday

There are no recent install failures in Windows update and I can't determine what app these files are associated with. The Summary tab for every one that I've checked shows only the keyword PatchSourceList. The machine is a server so it does not have Office installed. It is running Windows Server Update Services but those files are being stored on a separate drive.

I've run Malwarebytes and it found one item which I allowed it to delete. The log entry is: Registry Data Items Infected:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Start_ShowMyDocs (Hijack.StartMenu) -> Bad: (0) Good: (1) -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.
I may be wrong but this appears unrelated.

Any suggestions?
 
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#2 ·
Apparently I had acquired a large number of orphan installer files in the Installer folder that were being replicated as part of the installer cache any time a package was installed.

I downloaded Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 3 32-bit Support Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...11-FD83-419D-939B-9A772EA2DF90&displaylang=en (which apparently will also run under XP) and ran the command "msizap g". This apparently compared each installer with the registry's list of installed packages and removed the orphans. The Installer folder is now 554 MB.

I did not figure out where the orphan files came from in the first place.
 
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