Profiles and full HDD

[donkeymusic]

Good Morning,

 

Ive taken over at a school and I'm finding that my HDD's are filling up on staff desktops.

 

They use M365, so when I manually delete any profiles from c:\users it does provide space but also it shows as files more than the HDD size being deleted so presumably some sort of place holder for M365 documents.

 

I used to have Delprof in place, just wondering if this is still the best option?

 

For some of the devices I've manually removed profiles but when that user has returned to use the computer it doesn't allow them to log back in?

 

Any suggestions to improve this workflow, would be much appreciated.

 

Thank you

[Davit2005]

If you manually jus remove the users folder it will bring up errors. You need to remove their profile from registry too.

 

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

 

You might need to reboot the PC and log in as an admin then remove the files and the registry key.

 

I used to use delprof2 successfully in the past on a startup schedule that used to do the updates too.

Edited May 21, 2024 by Davit2005

[3s-gtech]

You can't delete profiles that way - you need to pull them from the registry too (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList). The group policy setting which deletes profiles older than x days does work, and is how I manage this.

[mavhc]

Also disable onedrive on the shared computers

[Olliedawg]

turn on storage sense to delete any temp files

 

maybe try files on demand for onedrive

 

use delprof2 running on a scheduled task to delete any local profile older than a month old? (that hasn't been used)

 

as above you need to remove the profile correctly, or they will get an error when trying to log in again. best way is through system properties > advanced > user profiles

Edited May 21, 2024 by Olliedawg

[mavhc]

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/PSSysAdminToolkit/1.0/Content/Public%5CRemove-UserProfile.ps1 shows the usage of remove-ciminstance

 

https://www.reddit.com/user/rsngb2/ has a tool that says it calculates ago correctly and uses the wmi commands to remove the profile properly

[donkeymusic]

You can't delete profiles that way - you need to pull them from the registry too (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList). The group policy setting which deletes profiles older than x days does work, and is how I manage this.

 

thanks, have you got details of the policy please?

 

thanks

[3s-gtech]

Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/User Profiles/Delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart.

 

Be careful using this. If you apply it where users may be storing files in their profile (e.g. local Documents folder) it will wipe them. It will also clear local profiles.

 

It works well on shared PCs.

[SAFC2403]

We've been seeing this on our older 6th gen HP desktops with 120GB drives. We've discovered that our SCCM instance is reserving a big chunk of the drive space as its cache - we've had to reduce the cache size used on the devices down to around 5Gb otherwise the drive just fills up and no one can logon.

 

We've also ordered a bunch of 250 GB drives so thats my half term job to replace those in around 60 machines and rebuild them.

[PotNoodleTech]

120gb drives are no use any more they'll fill up in less than a year.

 

Deprof doesn't work properly any more since microsoft totally broke "profile age" in a past windows update.

[TerryLambert]

Yeah, HDDs filling up is a common issue. With M365, it sounds like you’re seeing placeholder files for OneDrive or other synced services. Manually deleting profiles can work, but it’s tricky if users can’t log back in afterward.

 

Delprof isn’t really recommended anymore. You might want to use built-in Windows tools or PowerShell scripts to manage profiles. Also, check if Folder Redirection and OneDrive Files On-Demand are set up correctly. These can help keep local storage usage down.