How to Delete Old User Profiles on Workstations Across a Network

Old user profiles can consume large amount of space on shared network computers. This can be critical on some machines with relatively small Solid State hard drives.

Its a good idea to delete old user profiles from shared network Windows PCs to ensure that the drives do not run out of space. A number of methods have been around for some time, however recent changes to Windows 10 have broken a lot of these.

The attached Powershell script can be deployed via Group Policy as either a scheduled task, or a Computer Startup script.

The script can be configured with the maximum profile age. Profiles that have been modified after that date will be removed
You can specify that the script should not run on Windows Server operating systems
Lastly, you can specify a list of accounts for which the profile should never be deleted

# Delete old User Profiles
# Andrew Sharrad 14/5/2020, 17/5/2021, 09/03/2022

# Please test before widescale deployment

#The list of accounts, for which profiles must not be deleted
$ExcludedUsers ="Public","Default","itadmin"
$RunOnServers = $false
[int]$MaximumProfileAge = 120 # Profiles older than this will be deleted

$osInfo = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem

if ($RunOnServers -eq $true -or $osInfo.ProductType -eq 1) {
    New-EventLog -LogName Application -Source "Stone Profile Cleanup" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

    $obj = Get-WMIObject -class Win32_UserProfile | Where {(!$_.Special -and $_.Loaded -eq $false )}
    #$output = @()

    foreach ($littleobj in $obj) {
        if (!($ExcludedUsers -like $littleobj.LocalPath.Replace("C:\Users\",""))) {
            $lastwritetime = (Get-ChildItem -Path "$($littleobj.localpath)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat" -Force ).LastWriteTime
            if ($lastwritetime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-$MaximumProfileAge)) {
                $littleobj | Remove-WmiObject
              #  $output += [PSCustomObject]@{
              #      'RemovedSID' = $littleobj.SID
              #      'LastUseTime' = $litteobj.LastUseTime
              #      'LastWriteTime' = $lastwritetime
              #      'LocalPath' = $littleobj.LocalPath
              #  }
            }
        }
    }

#$output | Sort LocalPath | ft
#$output | Sort LocalPath | ft * -AutoSize | Out-String -Width 4096 | Out-File -filepath "C:\MyOutput.TXT" -append -Encoding Unicode
    Write-EventLog –LogName Application –Source "Stone Profile Cleanup" –EntryType Information –EventID 1701 -Category 2 -Message ("Profiles older than $MaximumProfileAge days have been cleaned up")
}

Note: Always test this script before wide-scale deployment.

Applies to:

Windows computers running on a network