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Clean unnecessary local user profiles

riva11's picture

I found an helpful tool to reduce unused user profiles on network PCs. Typical example are shared computers used by different people in the same office.
The User Profile Deletion Utility (Delprof.exe)  by Microsoft is a command-line utility designed to free up disk space in computers running Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

Usage :

delprof [/q] [/i] [/p] [/c:\\computername] [/d:days] [/?]

Where:

/q runs DelProf in quiet mode, with no confirmation for each profile to be deleted.

/i indicates that DelProf should ignore errors and continue deleting.

/p prompts for confirmation before deleting each profile.

/c:\\<computername> specifies a remote computer name on which to run DelProf.

/d:<days> specifies the number of days of inactivity (days is an integer).
Profiles with longer inactivity will be deleted.
/? displays command-line syntax

Link : Microsoft User Profile Deletion Utility

erikw's picture

Good tip

This is a great tip and can be used during the logon script.
It will give more space on the machine.

Thanxs for bringing it under our attention

Regards
Erik
www.DinamiQs.com
Dinamiqs is the home of VirtualStorm (www.virtualstorm.org)

akukalle's picture

not offically supported but

not offically supported but this work also in vista.

erikw's picture

Be carefull in Vista

This tool should be taken with care when used under Vista.
The tool declares a variable that can change in the use of Vista.
It changes between documents and settings  and the value Users.

Regards
Erik
www.DinamiQs.com
Dinamiqs is the home of VirtualStorm (www.virtualstorm.org)

riva11's picture

The most part of our

The most part of our computers are Win Xp. For the cleaning task I have created a job script to run remotly using Altiris DS. It works well and remove the old user profiles cached locally.

FrankB's picture

Cool Tool

For XP.

Here are my two cents about this:

Nowadays all those harddisks in those computer are so big that it doesn't matter.
And for security purposes: Don't setup your environment to store locally :)

Cheers, FrankB

______________________________________________
Frank Bastiaens
Senior Technical Consultant
Vanderlet B.V.

caleb's picture

Unfortunately...

Unfortunately Frank not all of us enjoy the control needed in our environments to stop people storing locally. It's a good tool to know about and will prove very useful here.

Eshwar's picture

very useful tool indeed

very useful tool indeed

Thanks,
Eshwar

riva11's picture

Folders location

In our company we have configured the Document and workgroups folders located on the server. Any docs local folders are not supported by IT team.

The Delprof tool is currently used in case of many people that used a pc and for this reason the Documents and Settings is full of unuseless profiles.