How to Remove Unwanted Files from Windows Servers?

How to Remove Unwanted Files from Windows Servers

What is Windows Server?

Windows server is an operating system which is founded by Microsoft in April 2003 by the name of windows server 2003. It supports data storage, applications, security, backups, monitor of each error, etc.

To improve our server performance, we increase or add RAM’s and CPU’s in our server, but low disk space also impacts the server performance, sometimes low disk space stops some of the server services and unable to open some software in the server, If the software opens then it works slow or crash down.

Also Read: Simple Steps to Create a Database using Azure Portal

Windows server saves the files a lot. Depending on the server which works it is doing, it saves a lot of logs files, system files, and Temp files on the server in different places.

In this post, I’ll provide how to remove unwanted folders and files from the windows server without using any disk clean-up software.

To connect any server from any remote location you must build a secure connection like VPN.

Ex – VPN Cisco AnyConnect

To know about VPN and VPN Cisco Anyconnect, Click on this link.

Steps to delete all unwanted files from windows Servers are given below –

1. Delete temp files –

There are a lot of files that are saved as a temp file when we installed any software or update windows patches that why sometimes we must delete the temp files manually.

Do not delete any files or folder if you recently installed any software, if you did not restart the Server it will use that temp file which are in temp folders. 

To delete temp files from servers you must follow below instructions 

• First, you have to log-in to the server with your Admin account credentials.
• Close all programs which are running like printer software and antivirus.
• Click on the start button or press the windows button.
• Then search Run.

• In search box type %Temp% – you will get all temp files in the opened window.
• Click on the menu option at the top then click on the folder option.

• Then click on the view option.

• Check on hidden items after that you will see all hidden files in the window.
• Select all files or press Ctrl + A Button at the same time.
• Then permanently delete the files or press Shift + Delete Button.

2. Delete all files from Recycle bin –

Cleaning up the recycle bin is the easiest way to free up the disk space.

Open Recycle bin and delete all files except the file which you want to put.

3. Delete user’s profiles from the server –

Ensure that users are no longer part of an organization or the user is no longer using that server for any work then you can delete his profile from the server.

Follow the below steps to delete the profile of users –

• Click on the Start
• Then right-click on My Computer – then open Properties.
• After that click on Advanced system settings on the left side of the window

• Then click on User profile settings.
• Then select the profile of a user to delete.
• After selecting the user profile click on the Delete button which is mention below.

After deleting some profile your disk space will become free somewhat, but it depends on user profile size.

4. To delete the Cache of Server –

It is temporary saving contain on client-side sometime server clean out all cache form server but sometimes we must do it manually.

Let’s get started with the below steps –

• Click on the start menu.
• Open control panel.
• Open Configuration manager properties.
• Click on the Cache option.
• Then click on configure settings.

• After that without checking on Delete persisted cache content

• Then click on.

5. Delete files from the following paths.

• C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download.
• C:\WER\ReportQueue – Select the only files which are older than the current month and delete them permanently.
• C:\WindowsAzure\Logs – Delete the log files with .txt extension.
• C:\Windows\Logs\CBS – (Check the files and remove them from the folder) – Check if we can delete the files like the text document and cabinet file from the path.
• C:\Windows\Minidump – Only remove the Contents inside the folder.

6. Clean up performance monitoring report of Windows Server.

It Analyses all the process which are ongoing on the server. In a few minutes we can get a report of the server performance deep insight utilization of RAM, Network I/O and Disk I/O this all information is saved into Computer Management. If someone forgets to delete the files, then it consumes large space into your server. So, delete it after you take out your performance report.

Follow the steps to delete the files from your Server –

• Right, click on the windows button.
• Click on computer management.
• Then go to Performance – monitoring tools – Data Collector sets – User-defined.
• Delete the file which is not useful for the server and which is displayed on the middle page.

7. Delete windows Error files – 

This tool identifies issues on your server unless you delete the logs or disable the tool.

Go to the below path and delete all error logs if you don’t need them. But according to analysis if you want to check on which time and which service is down it will show you information about it.

Go to the below patch to delete the files.

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER