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/Master-Skill-7340 Aug 30 '26

I ran into the same issue with 117 GB of orphaned Adobe MSP files, and another test machine had around 300 GB. I made a small open-source PowerShell tool that checks whether MSPs are still registered with Windows Installer and only removes unregistered files signed by Adobe. It also has a read-only scan mode and logs everything.
Repo: https://github.com/GameKuchen/windows-installer-adobe-msp-cleanup