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The following PowerShell script recipe will help you delete a remote file based on a list of computers stored in a text file. New PowerShell function will be created during the session which will be piped from the text file.

Generate C:\Scripts\Active_Computers.txt with computer names.

[PowerShell]
function delete-remotefile {
    PROCESS {
                $file = "\\$_\c$\install.exe"
                if (test-path $file)
                {
                echo "$_ install.exe exists"
                Remove-Item $file -force
                echo "$_ install.exe file deleted"
                }
            }
}

Get-Content  C:\Scripts\Active_Computers.txt | delete-remotefile
[/PowerShell]

This morning my Cacti appliance warned me by email that the windows root volume was getting above the 90% threshold. I configured this a while ago for getting notified in front.

When installing and configuring this Windows server I didn’t plan the configuration in the right way and my free space for C:\ volume is limited. If you install a fresh server again think about having one volume using the complete physical RAID disk space and not having one 18GB disk as I used now. My main problem is that server has 4GB of RAM and paging file is sitting on C:\.

I was not able to move the paging file nor could I  move the production virtual machine another volume. I went to C:\Windows and found a lot of blue directories which were used by the Automatic Updates. It used more than 500MB.

To safely remove Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs Registry entries go to here and download the tool. Run the tool and remove all hotfixe backup files.

After you run the tool; go to c:\Windows and delete all blue marked directories. They all should start with $ sign.

Now we have on directory we need have closer look. Mine on this particular server grow to 600+ mb. Go to C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download and verify your size.

Stop the “Automatic Updates” service or run “net stop wuauserv” from cmd.

Delete all subfolders within C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download. Restart the “Automatic Updates”  service. You can safely remote these. The procedure can be executed on a Windows XP or a Windows Server 2003 system.

Today I moved my data using the robocopy.exe tool and using the /move switch; the tool migrated data from one usb disk to another one. Before returning my usb disk to the IT department I checked the disk partition with one of the tools I use to check deleted files. Guess what the tool found 18000 files in 10 minutes scan on the usb volume which was empty…

Before I will return this USB disk for re-use I will make sure no data is left which can be recovered by any tool. With physical disks I used gdisk with dod option to wipe all data. For the USB disk I am going to install tool called Eraser which is freeware.

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