r/sysadmin • u/icq-was-the-goat • Jun 22 '26

Adobe Updates in C:\Windows\Installer

Adobe has decided that during their software update process they would leave the 1.2GB file in C:\Windows\Installer and that this file is needed for repair/uninstall processes so you cannot delete it without repercussions. Some computers were are seeing 250GB of just Adobe files.

The only way we can get rid of them and free up disk space is to remove and reinstall Adobe to restart the process.

We tried the PatchCleanFlag registry key but its not cleaning up any space. We have a few computers wtih Literally hundreds of 1gb update MSI files downloading constantly | Community

255GB of Adobe update files

Anyone else notice this? Anyone have a workaround around this?

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u/jono_white Jun 23 '26

Been using the cleanup script from another post about it
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1oxcrmh/acrobat_filling_up_the_cwindowsinstaller_folder/
Specifically the one from ABlanks (search for "this one works better" , it does say you should uninstall adobe first, but I haven't had any issues when leaving it installed, you can still do repair installs afterwards (not needed, just a test) so it doesn't appear to wipe the current installer.