Delete user's Temp files

Every now and then I have the need to perform a simple task across a large number of PCs. This could be rolling out an update of Flash or updating a registry entry. All of this is made simple by having some desktop management software like Altiris or Landesk to hand. Write a quick script to run a silent install or import the registry settings in silent mode and job done.

However occasionally you come a across a desire that is little more difficult to fulfill. This normally involves applying a registry entry or deleting a folder in all of the user profiles on a PC. This is often trickier than it first seems. For example say you wanted to empty the temp folder in every user's profile.
If you want to delete all files that have a .tmp extension anywhere on the C: drive then you can simple run the following

Del C:\*.tmp /s

Simple, job done.

But when you want to delete all the files in the Temp folder that appears in C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local settings\Temp. The problem here is that Username variable that would be different on all profiles and PCs and can't be scripted easily for a script inept like me.

You could do this with a log off script something like

Del "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp\*.*" /s /q

However this requires the user to logon and off and if you have a hot desk PC or similar it won't tidy up all the profiles on the PC.

Fortunately we live in world of Google and a quick search turned up the following script

@echo off

cd /D C:\Documents and Settings

REM ?-Clean Temp Folder?

for /D %%a in (*.*) do DEL /F /S /Q "%%a\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"

for /D %%a in (*.*) do FOR /D %%b IN ("%%a\Local Settings\Temp\*.*") DO RMDIR /S /Q "%%b"

No I don't pretend to understand exactly how all of this works, which is shame on me and suggests I should spend some time on learning scripting and I may even come to love Powershell, that odious piece of Microsoft software that seems to be taking over everything and is even replacing the GUI for management of the server side applications like Exchange.


I have to admit my brain has never worked that way, I am more a visual sort of person and command lines is something that I struggle with,  for the most part I simple can never remember the syntax of the command I need to use and spend hours re learning something that 9 times out of 10 I could achieve in 10 minutes with a simple GUI.

Of course having said that, I have written batch files to make mass changes to 1000 users in AD rather than spend hours wading through a GUI for each user.



For those that want to know more it seems to me that  the key here is the for statement and below is help on For from a Windows 7 machine that may help you understand what is going on

Runs a specified command for each file in a set of files.

FOR %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]

  %variable  Specifies a single letter replaceable parameter.

  (set)      Specifies a set of one or more files.  Wildcards may be used.

  command    Specifies the command to carry out for each file.

  command-parameters

             Specifies parameters or switches for the specified command.

To use the FOR command in a batch program, specify %%variable instead

of %variable.  Variable names are case sensitive, so %i is different

from %I.

If Command Extensions are enabled, the following additional

forms of the FOR command are supported:

FOR /D %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]

    If set contains wildcards, then specifies to match against directory

    names instead of file names.

FOR /R [[drive:]path] %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]

    Walks the directory tree rooted at [drive:]path, executing the FOR

    statement in each directory of the tree.  If no directory

    specification is specified after /R then the current directory is

    assumed.  If set is just a single period (.) character then it

    will just enumerate the directory tree.

FOR /L %variable IN (start,step,end) DO command [command-parameters]

    The set is a sequence of numbers from start to end, by step amount.

    So (1,1,5) would generate the sequence 1 2 3 4 5 and (5,-1,1) would

    generate the sequence (5 4 3 2 1)

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ("string") DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('command') DO command [command-parameters]

    or, if usebackq option present:

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('string') DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (`command`) DO command [command-parameters]

    file-set is one or more file names.  Each file is opened, read

    and processed before going on to the next file in file-set.

    Processing consists of reading in the file, breaking it up into

    individual lines of text and then parsing each line into zero or

    more tokens.  The body of the for loop is then called with the

    variable value(s) set to the found token string(s).  By default, /F

    passes the first blank separated token from each line of each file.

    Blank lines are skipped.  You can override the default parsing

    behavior by specifying the optional "options" parameter.  This

    is a quoted string which contains one or more keywords to specify

    different parsing options.  The keywords are:

        eol=c           - specifies an end of line comment character

                          (just one)

        skip=n          - specifies the number of lines to skip at the

                          beginning of the file.

        delims=xxx      - specifies a delimiter set.  This replaces the

                          default delimiter set of space and tab.

        tokens=x,y,m-n  - specifies which tokens from each line are to

                          be passed to the for body for each iteration.

                          This will cause additional variable names to

                          be allocated.  The m-n form is a range,

                          specifying the mth through the nth tokens.  If

                          the last character in the tokens= string is an

                          asterisk, then an additional variable is

                          allocated and receives the remaining text on

                          the line after the last token parsed.

        usebackq        - specifies that the new semantics are in force,

                          where a back quoted string is executed as a

                          command and a single quoted string is a

                          literal string command and allows the use of

                          double quotes to quote file names in

                          file-set.

    Some examples might help:

FOR /F "eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=, " %i in (myfile.txt) do @echo %i %j %k

    would parse each line in myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with

    a semicolon, passing the 2nd and 3rd token from each line to the for

    body, with tokens delimited by commas and/or spaces.  Notice the for

    body statements reference %i to get the 2nd token, %j to get the

    3rd token, and %k to get all remaining tokens after the 3rd.  For

    file names that contain spaces, you need to quote the filenames with

    double quotes.  In order to use double quotes in this manner, you also

    need to use the usebackq option, otherwise the double quotes will be

    interpreted as defining a literal string to parse.

    %i is explicitly declared in the for statement and the %j and %k

    are implicitly declared via the tokens= option.  You can specify up

    to 26 tokens via the tokens= line, provided it does not cause an

    attempt to declare a variable higher than the letter 'z' or 'Z'.

    Remember, FOR variables are single-letter, case sensitive, global,

    and you can't have more than 52 total active at any one time.

    You can also use the FOR /F parsing logic on an immediate string, by

    making the file-set between the parenthesis a quoted string,

    using single quote characters.  It will be treated as a single line

    of input from a file and parsed.

    Finally, you can use the FOR /F command to parse the output of a

    command.  You do this by making the file-set between the

    parenthesis a back quoted string.  It will be treated as a command

    line, which is passed to a child CMD.EXE and the output is captured

    into memory and parsed as if it was a file.  So the following

    example:

      FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %i IN (`set`) DO @echo %i

    would enumerate the environment variable names in the current

    environment.

In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced.

You can now use the following optional syntax:

    %~I         - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (")

    %~fI        - expands %I to a fully qualified path name

    %~dI        - expands %I to a drive letter only

    %~pI        - expands %I to a path only

    %~nI        - expands %I to a file name only

    %~xI        - expands %I to a file extension only

    %~sI        - expanded path contains short names only

    %~aI        - expands %I to file attributes of file

    %~tI        - expands %I to date/time of file

    %~zI        - expands %I to size of file

    %~$PATH:I   - searches the directories listed in the PATH

                   environment variable and expands %I to the

                   fully qualified name of the first one found.

                   If the environment variable name is not

                   defined or the file is not found by the

                   search, then this modifier expands to the

                   empty string

The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:

    %~dpI       - expands %I to a drive letter and path only

    %~nxI       - expands %I to a file name and extension only

    %~fsI       - expands %I to a full path name with short names only

    %~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH

                   environment variable for %I and expands to the

                   drive letter and path of the first one found.

    %~ftzaI     - expands %I to a DIR like output line

In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid

values.  The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name.

Picking upper case variable names like %I makes it more readable and

avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.