Delete List of User Profiles

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-02-25T19:09:55.000Z

I am looking at deleting all user profiles that have not been used in over 10 days. I saw previous examples that used the $ _. Special option but that is not working for me. Also the lastusetime does not work, for some reason it is displaying them all as being accessed within the last day. I do not have the option to use group policy either.

This command work’s

“Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_UserProfile | Where-Object { $_.LocalPath.split('')[-1] -eq ‘#######’ } | Remove-CimInstance”

and I just need to run it against a list of profile names that I have in a text file. This is what i have so far but I need to remove or change the -eq to ru against the actual list of profiles.

Any help would be great

Neally · 2022-02-25T19:37:25.000Z

sparkattack:

I saw previous examples that used the $ _. Special option

not sure what that means. $_ just means current value in the pipe.

sparkattack:

I just need to run it against a list of profile names that I have in a text file

just put it in a foreach loop? get-content of the file, foreach line in the file, remove profile. give it a try. What do you have in the file? the username? the path? something else?

Neally · 2022-02-25T19:37:51.000Z

oh also…

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Neally · 2022-02-25T20:00:50.000Z

if it’s actually usernames you can also do something like so

$deleteProfileList = get-content "deleteProfiles.txt"
$deleteProfileList

Get-CimInstance win32_userprofile |
Where-Object {$_.localpath -match "$($deleteProfileList -join "|")" } |
Remove-CimInstance -Verbose

bob
linda
tine
gene
louise
VERBOSE: Performing the operation "Remove-CimInstance" on target "Win32_UserProfile (SID = "S-1-5-2
1-4234295003-2652736177-23668618...)".
VERBOSE: Perform operation 'Delete CimInstance' with following parameters, ''namespaceName' = root/
cimv2,'instance' = Win32_UserProfile (SID = "S-1-5-21-4234295003-2652736177-23668618...)'.
VERBOSE: Operation 'Delete CimInstance' complete.

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-02-26T01:36:55.000Z

The file has a list of profile names from the Users folder

gary-m-g · 2022-02-26T02:00:07.000Z

The following filter omits the Windows required profiles:

$regularProfiles = Get-CimInstance win32_userprofile | where {!$_.Special}

You only have to figure out what else to leave.

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-02-28T18:17:27.000Z

@alexw

Here is the error that I get when I run that command. What would cause the Remove command to throw that error?

Neally · 2022-02-28T18:22:53.000Z

sparkattack:

Here is the error that I get when I run that command.

What error? what command are you running?

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-02-28T19:26:56.000Z

I was running the code that you had above. I work in a very restrictive environment so that may be part of the problem

Neally · 2022-02-28T19:31:36.000Z

sparkattack:

I was running the code that you had above. I work in a very restrictive environment so that may be part of the problem

The list you import needs to match the actual username,

we do not see the error you are getting…

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-02-28T19:37:28.000Z

Sorry about that, here it is.

VERBOSE: Operation ‘Delete CimInstance’ complete.
Remove-CimInstance : The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
At line:6 char:1

Remove-CimInstance -Verbos
CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (Win32_UserProfi…58-28168534…):CimInstance) [Remove-CimInstance], CimException
FullyQualifiedErrorId : HRESULT 0x80070020,Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimCmdlets.RemoveCimInstanceCommand

VERBOSE: Operation ‘Delete CimInstance’ complete.

Neally · 2022-02-28T19:39:05.000Z

sparkattack:

Sounds like a file or something in the directory you are trying to delete is in use.

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-02-28T19:54:00.000Z

That is what I was looking at, but this is there user profiles and I am the only one logged in. So something in the profiles is maintaining a connection.

saidbrandon · 2022-02-28T19:55:44.000Z

sparkattack:

That is what I was looking at, but this is there user profiles and I am the only one logged in. So something in the profiles is maintaining a connection.

If you have a command prompt, powershell window, and sometimes an explorer window open to that path it will throw that error.

gary-m-g · 2022-02-28T20:46:41.000Z

There are certain programs which maintain the user’s profile in use even after they’ve logged off.
Some programs–some of the very proprietary programs we use–actually change the ownership of objects in the user’s profile such that even administrators are denied access.

It’s ugly but it happens.
I check the CimInstances Loaded property to see if the profile is in use; if so, I skip it and log it to a file.

if($_.Loaded) {
    # Log and continue. Nothing to do.
}

Remove-CimInstance $_ -Confirm:$FALSE -ErrorAction continue -ErrorVariable RemoveError
	if($RemoveError) {
	$baseError = $RemoveError
	$ErrSid = $RemoveError.TargetObject.SID
	if($ErrSid) {
		$uName = $_.LocalPath
	}
	add-Content -path $remErrLog -value "$($baseError)`n$($ErrSid)`n$($uName)"
}

spiceuser-dlbl2 · 2022-03-04T16:28:31.000Z

There is controls in the environment that I think are stopping me from doing this. Since the NOC controls my life I can not do anything about it. You were all very helpful though.