Acrobat Reader patch updates bloat Windows Installer folder
Acrobat Reader patch updates bloat Windows Installer folder. Look at any computer that has had Acrobat Reader installed for a few years. The C:\Windows\Installer folder will have dozens of Gigabytes taken up by Adobe .msp files. Check the size of the folder before and after uninstalling Adobe Reader - the folder will decrease in size significantly. Reinstalling Adobe Reader results in a smaller size. It would be very helpful to the user for Acrobat Reader's update process to achieve this size reduction automatically. There are millions of customers losing dozens of Gigabytes each, this should be a top priority to fix. Attached image shows the result of uninstalling Acrobat Reader, the red-outlined files were all deleted.
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Martin Žeravík commented
I can confirm this issue on Windows 11 Pro with Adobe Acrobat DC.
My `C:\Windows\Installer` folder had grown to **165.72 GB**, including 263 MSP files larger than 500 MB (151.81 GB combined).
I resolved the problem by enabling the following registry setting:
`HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockdown`
`PatchCleanFlag` (DWORD) = `1`
After performing a normal Acrobat update:
- Installer folder decreased from **165.72 GB to 10.27 GB**.
- Large MSP files decreased from **263 to 4**.
- **155.45 GB of disk space was recovered.**No Acrobat reinstallation or manual deletion of installer files was necessary.
This demonstrates that Acrobat already has a mechanism to clean up obsolete patches. Adobe should enable this cleanup automatically rather than allowing the Windows Installer cache to grow indefinitely.