Ian Broadbent

Following on from a warning you had in another post regarding Windows Updates running, one way to help prevent possible issues with PatchCleaner when Windows Updates are running or pending is to check for Pending File Renames. I have used the following line in batch scripts before: reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" /v PendingFileRenameOperations If the key “PendingFileRenameOperations” is present, that means there is one (or more) files scheduled to be...

Thanks for the explanation about how the cleanup works (i.e. the Product key, I'm understanding more of it now. I ran the VBS script you mentioned; on one PC that has 475 msi and msp files, the script listed 88 files to keep, but only 54 were unique after I noticed some filenames were duplicated. PatchCleaner reported 173 files in use and 336 files orphaned. So looks like there is some difference between the VB Script method and PatchCleaner's. (I feel more confident in PatchCleaner given that it...

I did more testing, I found a batch script here https://ourrick.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/find-orphaned-installer-files-in-cwindowsinstaller-folder/ which also does a detection for orphaned msi files by checking the ."HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Patches" key. On a Windows 7 x64 PC with 492 msi and msp files in the C:\Windows\Installer directory, I ran the script and it found 492 files, but all of them had entries in the registry. On the same PC, PatchCleaner...

I did more testing, I found a batch script here https://ourrick.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/find-orphaned-installer-files-in-cwindowsinstaller-folder/ which also does a detection for orphaned msi files by checking the ."HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Patches" key. On a Windows 7 x64 PC with 492 msi and msp files in the C:\Windows\Installer directory, I ran the script and it found 492 files, but all of them had entries in the registry. On the same PC, PatchCleaner...

Thanks for the PatchCleaner tool, I’ve used it a few times on Windows 7 64-bit PCs and been able to clean up several GBs. But I have noticed that after running PatchCleaner, at the next reboot, the PC spends 5-10 minutes with “applying windows updates..” or similar even though no updates have been installed recently. It seems Windows has detected some changes and needs to sort itself out. I had a look at some of the files that PatchCleaner detected as orphans and found an msp file that was a patch...

Does PatchCleaner check for patch files in the registry under: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Patches\ ? I found msp files under that key that were for Office 2010 (and possibly other versions of MSI-installed Office) and Silverlight that PatchCleaner found as "orphaned". (Many corporations use the MSI-installer for Office 2013 & 2016 and not the click-to-run version.) The S-1-5-18 identifier relates to the Windows local system account which is used to...

Thanks for the PatchCleaner tool, I’ve used it a few times on Windows 7 64-bit PCs and been able to clean up several GBs. But I have noticed that after running PatchCleaner, at the next reboot, the PC spends 5-10 minutes with “applying windows updates..” or similar even though no updates have been installed recently. It seems Windows has detected some changes and needs to sort itself out. I had a look at some of the files that PatchCleaner detected as orphans and found an msp file that was a patch...