The Patch Cache and Freeing Space

re: The Patch Cache and Freeing Space

AJ — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:04:12 GMT

I thought I'd toss out a well-known but often overlooked house cleaning tip. MsiZap G! is helpful for clearing out Windows Installer resources that are no longer being referenced. For whatever reason, Windows Installer doesn't have the best garbage collection after an uninstall or rollback.

re: The Patch Cache and Freeing Space

Heath Stewart — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 06:46:05 GMT

Take care when using msizap, though. "G!" is safe, but exploring other switches without understanding their ramifications could mean you cannot patch products anymore because product registration is missing (essentially making it appear to Windows Installer that your product is not there). Treat this like editing the registry.

How to Safely Delete Orphaned Patches

Heath Stewart's Blog — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:16:34 GMT

If Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 fails to install, you might find additional .msp files under %WINDIR%\Installer

re: The Patch Cache and Freeing Space

Roger — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:30:09 GMT

Thanks for the information - I just ran MsiZap G! and cleaned up 14 gigs of space from my C drive!

There were a lot of files in my C:\windows\installer folder - the end result of installing 100's of programs over the last two and a half years. Nice to know I can safely clean the installer folder since it was so large in size and because it's only going to keep growing in size as I'm continually installing and unistalling software and I am never ever going to do a clean reinstall of windows.

How to Install TFC without PPE

Heath Stewart's Blog — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:07:34 GMT

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 , now available for MSDN subscribers and Express editions freely available

Why Windows Installer May Require so much Disk Space

Heath Stewart's Blog — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:20:42 GMT

Windows Installer is an engine for performing transactional installations. When installing a product