How to remove Office 2010 SP1 backup files

For that purpose I removed this folder:
C:\Windows\Installer\$PatchCache$
You may need to enable "Show Hiddn Files" and "Show System Files" in Folder option to be able to see those folder.
Hope this help someone.

 

C:\MSOCache will exist upon the installation of either Office itself and the Office updates. I usually manually delete it and so far, M$ Office works fine without any problem.
Perhaps, some experts here can comment about deleting C:\MSOCache and C:\Windows\Installer\$PatchCache$?

 

Thanks to both for the suggestions. I delted both files and all apperas to be working fine. I did leave them in the re-cyle bin, just in case...

 

Well, I am trying to offer my opinion on this subject, but if I have said anything wrong, please do not hesitate to correct my mistake.
I feel that C:\MSOCache is only needed if you want to add or remove features of M$ Office 2010, such as to install M$ Outlook 2010 which is not installed previously. In a way, C:\MSOCache acts as the installation DVD of M$ Office 2010.

Then again, we users seldom require to change the features of M$ Office 2010 on a regular basis, thus C:\MSOCache remain idle there without being used and this constitutes waste in hard disk space. Even if you need to change the features of M$ Office 2010, you just have to point the M$ Office installer to the location of the installation files of M$ Office 2010. As such, it appears that the function of C:\MSOCache can be replaced by the installation files of M$ Office 2010, thus it is unneeded.

Again, this is just my opinion. If you have more accurate knowledge on this subject, be free to post your ideas here.

 

MSOCache is only for repairing component installations or adding components (whether at will or if they were set to be installed "on first use" when originally installing the software). if you don't plan on using these features without the disc in the near future it is totally safe to delete this folder and all its contents.

 

stayboogy
Thanks for sharing your opinion. What do you think about C:\Windows\Installer\$PatchCache$?

 

no problem, that's what this place is for

idk, my limited knowledge about that particular folder would say it is probably about the same as MSOcache, but it may be more for the system to repair certain files in the background without user input too, but like i said i don't really know. mine is only 400mb so it's not that big a deal to me, but if it gets to >1GB i'll be looking into it more to find out about deleting its contents myself. to be safe i'd keep it if i were you. you could always make a backup of it, delete it, and see how things progress from their, but i figure at some point the system will recreate it with new key folders too...

 

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I'm not saying it's safe to delete, i actually leave those files on my hdd. I posted just an info about what is the meaning of PatchCache

 

well, that folder's purpose is not really any different than what i posted before in reply to the question asked of me... it seems it's more for software patches than for system patches though, which i'm pretty sure that system patches' caches go into the winsxs folder, hence its relatively large size.

 

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Thanks, Gremo for the useful article.

Deleting C:\Windows\Installer\$PatchCache$ will cause other patch cache of other software to be deleted as well. It will be quite a hassle to identify which patch cache that belongs to M$ Office.

 

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