Local Profiles + SSD's Running out of disk space during the year

[Zourous]

This is a new problem we've experienced this year with ever growing local profiles and small sized SSD's in place. When reported at the time, we fire off a manual delprof2 command to delete profiles until some plonk turns off the PC and then we're back to square one again. From what I've read and tried a bit, group policy isn't great at achieving this. In fact when I tried it, it didn't do anything and I gave up. Yes we can schedule delprof2 to delete profiles but ideally we would like just delete some of the older profiles. When I tried this it turns out there is some bug in the current versions of W10 and it just deletes the wrong profiles and not necessarily the oldest one's. Anyone have any other great ways to achieve this?

[timbo343]

Can you not run DelProf when the machine is turned on in the morning?

 

The other alternative would be to use mandatory profiles over local profiles and maybe store the mandatory profile on the local machine? How often would you change the mandatory profile?

 

We run mandatory profiles here and the local profile that it creates during logon is removed when the user logs off.

[Warwick_Tech]

This is a new problem we've experienced this year with ever growing local profiles and small sized SSD's in place. When reported at the time, we fire off a manual delprof2 command to delete profiles until some plonk turns off the PC and then we're back to square one again. From what I've read and tried a bit, group policy isn't great at achieving this. In fact when I tried it, it didn't do anything and I gave up. Yes we can schedule delprof2 to delete profiles but ideally we would like just delete some of the older profiles. When I tried this it turns out there is some bug in the current versions of W10 and it just deletes the wrong profiles and not necessarily the oldest one's. Anyone have any other great ways to achieve this?

 

We have tried several ways to achieve this -

 

DelProf2 seems hit and miss on W10, so we used to use this Ps1 script

 

$profiles = $null

 

$profiles = Get-WMIObject -class Win32_UserProfile | Where {((!$_.Special) -and ($_.LocalPath -ne "C:\Users\Administrator") -and ($_.LocalPath -ne "C:\Users\UpdatusUser"))}

 

if ($profiles -ne $null) {

$profiles | Remove-WmiObject

}

 

Exit

 

BUT this was also clunky and I think caused some printer connection issues -

 

So instead I use this script now which you can easily alter days

 

Get-CimInstance win32_userprofile -verbose | Where {$_.LastUseTime -lt $(Get-Date).Date.AddDays(-14)} | Remove-CimInstance -Verbose

 

Just change '14' to however may days you wish.

[Burrout565]

What about the use of the 'Delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart' policy? Under 'Comp. Configuartion\Admin Templates\System\User Profiles'?

[robyholmes]

What about the use of the 'Delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart' policy? Under 'Comp. Configuartion\Admin Templates\System\User Profiles'?

 

We use this setting with DelProf2 as well but set to a higher number of days. So if Windows doesn't manage to remove the profile DelProf2 gives it a go.

[Zourous]

What about the use of the 'Delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart' policy? Under 'Comp. Configuartion\Admin Templates\System\User Profiles'?

 

Tried this, but for whatever reason it did nothing. can't see what I was doing wrong.

[Zourous]

We have tried several ways to achieve this -

 

DelProf2 seems hit and miss on W10, so we used to use this Ps1 script

 

 

 

BUT this was also clunky and I think caused some printer connection issues -

 

So instead I use this script now which you can easily alter days

 

 

 

Just change '14' to however may days you wish.

 

 

Thanks, I might give the last script a try on a few PC's

[themightymrp]

I use Delprof2 as a shutdown script. I only ever want to delete student profiles though to be honest so my scripts is quite simple. Student accounts all start with a number for their enrolment year, so it just looks like this:

 

\\DOMAIN\netlogon\SoftwareGPOs\DelProf2.exe /q /id:18* /id:17* /id:16* /id:15* /id:14* /id:13* /id:12* /id:11*

 

Not had any issues with it on Windows 7 or 10 so far

[rosslaing]

What about the use of the 'Delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart' policy? Under 'Comp. Configuartion\Admin Templates\System\User Profiles'?

This doesnt work properly with windows 10. This policy uses the timestamp of the ntuser.dat file to determine the age of the profile. With windows 10 Store updates and some windows updates modify the .dat file on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not the user has logged on.

 

I have had a premier support call into MS for this and they acknowledged this as a bug, but it has never been fixed.

 

Delprof also uses the .dat file for age by default unless you change it to use the .ini, but even this is not accurate anymore, so you have the same problem. We have resorted to just cleaning our IT suites down completely using delprof 2 or 3 times a year.

Edited July 19, 2019 by rosslaing

[mavhc]

Anyone noticed that delprof2 doesn't seem to work properly if you have more than a month as the delay? 30 days if fine, 35 just doesn't find anyone to delete

[Griff]

I have an issue where delprof2 cannot delete a reg key when deleting a user profile (see below) I think this then causes issues when they try to log back in

 

Edited December 19, 2019 by Griff

[DrBeaker]

This doesnt work properly with windows 10. This policy uses the timestamp of the ntuser.dat file to determine the age of the profile. With windows 10 Store updates and some windows updates modify the .dat file on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not the user has logged on.

 

I have had a premier support call into MS for this and they acknowledged this as a bug, but it has never been fixed.

 

Delprof also uses the .dat file for age by default unless you change it to use the .ini, but even this is not accurate anymore, so you have the same problem. We have resorted to just cleaning our IT suites down completely using delprof 2 or 3 times a year.

 

Yet another thing to mark Windows 10 down as not a solid product fit for purpose. Why can't they focus on fixing bugs and THEN feature/system updates?

[mavhc]

Fixing bugs is boring, plus sharing computers is bad for MS, they can't sell as many licences, you really really want 1:1 laptops, don't you...

 

Remove-CimInstance is the alternative to delprof2, but the date issue is still a problem

[PotNoodleTech]

We just manually run delprof2 in the holidays if we are doing maintenance in a room.

[themightymrp]

I'm not fussed about how frequently it clear down student profiles so I have a batch file that runs via GPO as a shutdown script. Works really well and leaves staff profiles alone. Logon times for students are pretty good anyway on the machines with SSD's

 

My script pretty much looks like this, student accounts start with the year of entry i.e. 19 is Year 7 and so on:

 

\\domainname\netlogon\SoftwareGPOs\DelProf2.exe /q /id:19* /id:18* /id:17* /id:16* /id:15* /id:14* /id:13*

[BOOT]

I have an issue where delprof2 cannot delete a reg key when deleting a user profile (see below) I think this then causes issues when they try to log back in

I run it twice, seems to sort that issue second time around.