Large number of CAB files in Windows Temp folder

Description

• A large number of high-volume CAB files are present in C:\Windows\Temp and are taking up a significant amount of hard drive space.

Environment

• N-able N-central 9.5+
• Patch Management Enabled
• Any Patch Supported Windows OS
  • N-able N-central Patch Management: Windows Update Agent and OS Version Requirements

Solution

These CAB files are left over by Windows Installer packages, frequently through patch installations. While Windows should be cleaning these CAB files up it is possible that the cleanup does not happen when it should, thus causing the CAB files to be orphaned. Typically the cause of these CAB files being populated is that the SFC (System File Checker) archive process will attempt to archive the CBS.log when it reaches a given size, however, the Windows Resource Protection service can prevent overwriting of key system files. If this happens it can orphan a very large CAB file, and then repeat this process the next time it tries to run. Manual cleanup is the only method to reduce the size taken up by these CAB files, but consult your system administrator to ensure none of them are required for system troubleshooting.