Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Quick Tip: Enabling Disk Cleanup Tool Without Reboot

Bumped into this issue where I had to free up some space on a Windows 2008 R2 SP1 server without rebooting it. The Disk Cleanup tool is perfectly suited for the job but isn’t installed by default on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

However, when you install this tool by using the default way a lot of other unwanted software on the same server is installed as well. Simply because this tool is installed when adding the Feature Desktop Experience. And before it works a reboot is required as well. And during production this is unwanted.

Gladly I found another way which involved two simple copy & paste actions. This gives me the Disk Cleanup tool ONLY and doesn’t require a reboot at all. So that’s two wins in one strike!

Want to know more? Go here and follow the steps as described in the second procedure. Works like a charm!

A big word of thanks to Nathalie Vaise for sharing this.

5 comments:

Kevin Greene said...

Marnix,

I use CCleaner instead of Disk Cleanup and it's much better (and free).
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

You can tidy up stale registry entries along with startup program modifications too.

It's the best way to fine-tune your servers and clients - particularly legacy ones.

HTH,

Kev

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi Kevin.

Thanks for your comment mate. I know the tool and love it. But this customer didn't want to install any 3rd party tooling on their servers.

Also I only needed to remove old Service Pack files and nothing more. In cases like these Disk Cleanup is perfectly suited for the job.

Cheers,
Marnix

Unknown said...

Hi Marnix

unable to find the information

Unknown said...

Hi Marnix

i am unable to find the 2 steps

Unknown said...

Original link https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff630161(WS.10).aspx