Why is Acrobat Bloating the C:WindowsInstaller Folder?
Asked by
TechSavvyNinja42
I've been facing a recurring issue where the C:WindowsInstaller folder on multiple computers is expanding drastically in size—often exceeding 50GB and sometimes reaching over 100GB. The moment I uninstall Acrobat, the folder size drops to around 5GB. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Answers
It seems like Acrobat uses MSI patch files for updates instead of the regular installer files, which is why Windows Installer keeps a large cache of those .msp files. It's pretty frustrating!
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I've seen this problem too, especially with older Adobe versions. Updating to the latest release has helped in some cases, but sometimes I had to go in and manually delete the huge files myself.
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It looks like you can’t entirely avoid this issue with MSI-based Adobe programs. Creative Cloud 2022 and later switched to a different method, though, so that might help.
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It does seem like a lack of maintenance from the Adobe developers' side. I once wrote a PowerShell script to find leftover MSI installers in the C:WindowsInstaller directory. I might need to revisit that script soon. Alternatively, consider uninstalling and reinstalling Acrobat if you haven’t tried that yet.
FileFinderPro: I know of a tool called PatchCleaner that can help, but it supposedly misidentifies some Acrobat files as orphaned, so just be careful!
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You might want to check if Acrobat supports admin installations. That should technically store less data in the installer cache.
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I can't believe they're leaving those 1.1GB .msp files just sitting there! Come on, Adobe, clean up after yourselves!
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CuriousCat88: This explains so much about the bloated folder!