The field servers in our company
are several years old, and new
applications are taking up a lot of
space on the C drive. To free up
some space, I wrote a script, DeleteHotfixBackups.bat, that deletes all
the backup folders for Microsoft
hotfixes and the associated log files
in C:\WINDOWS.
Listing 1 shows DeleteHotfixBackups.bat.
Microsoft's backup hotfix folders are hidden folders that start with the $ character.
So, in a For loop, the script uses the Dir command to obtain the names of all
the hidden folders that begin with the $ character. The script pipes the names
to the Do portion of the loop, where the RD command deletes those folders.
To use DeleteHotfixBackups.bat, you simply need to place the script on your
server and run it. I wrote this script for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000.
Note that deleting all the backup hotfix folders can be risky if a hotfix breaks
an application and you need to undo that particular hotfix. This script will
also remove any backup service-pack folders because they also begin with the
$ character.
—Tom Barnett, senior IT analyst, Fortune 250 energy company
See Associated Figure