Windows Installer has been with us for years, and although it has several advantages, one of its weakest aspects is its tendency to accumulate outdated installers and patches belonging to programs that were removed by the user long ago. The folder that stores these orphaned elements is usually hidden, but it is not a good idea to delete “everything” that appears there. The PatchCleaner tool does the dirty work for us.
The Space Requirement
The latest version of Windows requires a minimum amount of space for installation that ranges between 16 and 20 gigabytes, depending on the edition. As we already know well, that minimum is almost absolute, and the user will have to be very creative to work with the operating system under such conditions. Space requirements have increased not only because they accompany the increase in software complexity, but also to compensate for those situations where efficiency is conspicuously absent. Microsoft decided to abandon its policy of modular and truly personalized installations (a detail that should definitely return for a future Windows) but to this we must add the whims of Windows Installer, which chooses to keep orphaned installers from already-deleted programs.
This last point can be improved with the help of a very simple tool called PatchCleaner. It has almost no interface, and its dependence on .NET Framework is evident, but it does its job perfectly by offering two options: You can delete all orphaned installers, or move them to a temporary folder, where you can observe what exactly was left lost on our hard drive. PatchCleaner's operation focuses on the Windows\Installer folder, which, by the way, we can explore on our own if we enable the option to see hidden files and folders, however, it is necessary to restrain ourselves and not delete everything that appears there. It is safer to let PatchCleaner determine what qualifies as orphaned, and what should stay.
The older your Windows installation, the more space you can reclaim, unless you've used a similar tool before. The version of .NET Framework needed to run PatchCleaner is 4.5, and it works with any version of Windows from Windows 7 onward, whether 32 or 64-bit.
