Find old temporary files
Documentation: Microsoft Learn
Get-ChildItem walks the current user's temp directory recursively for files only, with -EA SilentlyContinue swallowing the access denials that a deep walk inevitably hits.
The script
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Get-ChildItem $env:TEMP -File -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(- 30) | Sort-Object Length -Descending | Select-Object FullName,Length,LastWriteTime- Stage 1Get-ChildItem
-File -Recurse -ErrorAction - Stage 2Where-Object
-lt - Stage 3Sort-Object
-Descending - Stage 4Select-Object
Positional values or no named parameters
How it works
Get-ChildItem walks the current user's temp directory recursively for files only, with -EA SilentlyContinue swallowing the access denials that a deep walk inevitably hits. Where-Object keeps entries whose LastWriteTime predates a thirty-day cutoff, Sort-Object puts the largest first, and the projection carries the full path with size and age.
Adapting it
$env:TEMP resolves to the profile of whoever is running the command. Point it at C:\Windows\Temp instead, since that is usually the directory holding the gigabytes on a server.
Requirements
Elevation to read temp directories belonging to other accounts.
If the result is unexpected
The command returns almost nothing on a server whose disk is visibly full of temporary data, or it runs for a very long time and throws access errors.
$env:TEMP expands to the temp directory of whichever account is running the command, which on a server is rarely where the space went. Service accounts and the system profile each have their own. The recursive walk also descends into deep and permission-restricted paths, and the suppressed errors conceal how much it failed to read.
- Print $env:TEMP and confirm which profile it resolves to before drawing any conclusion.
- Point the scan at C:\Windows\Temp and at the temp directories beneath C:\Users to cover the accounts that matter.
- Remove the error suppression temporarily so the access failures become visible.
- Add -Depth to bound the recursion when the tree turns out to be unexpectedly deep.
- Total the lengths with Measure-Object -Sum to check whether the files found actually account for the missing space.
Validate the result
The summed size of the returned files is a meaningful fraction of the space reported as used, and the scan finishes without suppressed access errors.
Keep the check reliable
Target temp locations explicitly by path in any cleanup script rather than relying on an environment variable that changes with the calling account.
