How do I delete old user profiles

Question

How do I delete old user profiles on my Dell Latitude 3540 running Windows 11 Enterprise (Version: 22H2, OS Build: 22621.3155) using PowerShell? I need to free up space on multiple machines at the school where I work as an IT Technician. I want to delete only the old user profiles in bulk without affecting the Admin profiles or Active Directory

Answer 1

You can try the following (for profiles that haven't been updated in 6 months):

# Define the threshold date (6 months ago)
$thresholdDate = (Get-Date).AddMonths(-6)
# Get a list of user profiles excluding the Administrator profile
$userProfiles = Get-CimInstance Win32_UserProfile | Where-Object { $_.Special -ne $true -and $_.LocalPath -notlike "*\\Administrator" } | Select-Object LocalPath, SID, LastUseTime
# Filter profiles that haven't been updated in the last 6 months
$profilesToDelete = $userProfiles | Where-Object { $_.LastUseTime -lt $thresholdDate }
# Delete the identified profiles
foreach ($profile in $profilesToDelete) {
    Write-Host "Deleting profile: $($profile.LocalPath)"
    Remove-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_UserProfile -Filter "SID='$($profile.SID)'"
}

Save this script as a .ps1 file, such as DeleteOldUserProfiles.ps1. Then, you can run this script periodically using Task Scheduler or another automation tool to automate the process.

Make sure to test the script in a safe environment before deploying it to production. Additionally, ensure that you run the script with administrative privileges to delete user profiles successfully.

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hth

Marcin

Answer 2

Hi Dipesh Neupane,

Please try this script.

$localadmin = Get-LocalGroupMember -Group administrators
$date = (Get-Date).AddDays(-30)
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_UserProfile | Where-Object {$_.sid -notin $localadmin.sid.value -and $_.LastUseTime -lt $date} | ForEach-Object{ Remove-CimInstance -InputObject $_ }

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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Answer 3

I've had good success with Delprof2 in the past and have added into several different cleanup processes over the years: https://helgeklein.com/free-tools/delprof2-user-profile-deletion-tool/