OT again. Continuing saga of running out of disk space. Seems to be an Adobe

[snowsnowsnow]

Seems to be an Adobe Acrobat problem.

As I mentioned, one of my Windows boxes is always running low on space - sometimes the free space on C: goes to zero.  When this happens, I desperately search around for things to delete.  Note that this machine has a small disk (only 60G, which is miniscule in today's terms, but that is it), so a gig is actually a lot of space.

Anyway, I figured out that Adobe Acrobat was creating a lot of huge files, with either a MSI or MSP extension.  Here is a directory listing:


 Directory of C:\Users\All Users\Adobe\ARM\Reader_23.006.20380

04/27/2024  07:00 PM    <DIR>          .
04/27/2024  07:00 PM    <DIR>          ..
03/30/2024  07:02 PM    <DIR>          25580
03/22/2024  07:02 PM    <DIR>          29403
04/01/2024  07:01 PM    <DIR>          32679
03/21/2024  07:03 PM    <DIR>          9558
01/04/2024  04:25 AM       114,866,176 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820458_incr.msi
01/02/2024  01:17 PM       135,634,944 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820458_incr.msp
01/15/2024  06:07 AM       246,170,624 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820470.msi
01/13/2024  04:58 PM       380,760,064 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820470.msp
02/11/2024  12:15 PM       251,662,336 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820533.msi
02/10/2024  01:40 PM       386,334,720 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820533.msp
02/23/2024  06:34 AM       251,656,192 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820555.msi
02/22/2024  07:27 PM       386,363,392 AcroRdrDCUpd2300820555.msp
03/13/2024  04:33 AM       340,578,304 AcroRdrDCUpd2400120604.msi
03/11/2024  08:48 PM       473,833,472 AcroRdrDCUpd2400120604.msp
03/20/2024  07:44 AM       340,898,304 AcroRdrDCUpd2400120615.msi
03/28/2024  06:32 AM       248,078,336 AcroRdrDCUpd2400120629.msi
              12 File(s)  3,556,836,864 bytes

So, my questions for the group are:

1) Is it safe to delete these?  Note that I've already deleted all the MSIs, leaving the MSPs.  I assume the MSIs are some kind of update - but deity-only-knows why there are so many of them and why they accumulate.

2) What are the MSPs?  Again, I'm pretty sure I know what the MSIs are, but what are the MSPs?

By the way, there are many directories such as the above - this is only the first one I found.  All seem to be related to Acrobat.  Just deleting these MSI files was enough to get me off the crunch, so the problem is solved - at least for now.

Note also the "ARM" in the directory name.  This is an X86-64 system.  Why is it downloading ARM stuff?  (I'm of course only guessing that that is what the ARM means...)

Finally, I have a theory - and it is only a theory - that the reason there are so many - why it keeps downloading them - is that it tries to download it, runs out of disk space, then some time later tries again - and again, and again, without, of course, deleting the failed attempts.

[jmburton2001]

1) Is it safe to delete these?

My two cents... When I've found myself in this position I throw caution to the wind. I'm old and have been dealing with stuff like this for decades. Worst case scenario? I have to uninstall and reinstall.

Anyway, here's what I would do.

1. Copy all those files to another location like a different folder or even a different drive.

2. Delete all those files.

3. See if everything runs. If not, restore those files.

In the end you're no worse off than you were before.

[snowsnowsnow]

Yeah, that's about what I've done.  I ended up deleting the MSPs as well.  Now, I have lots of free space.  We'll see how long it lasts.

The real reason I posted this is that I wanted to know what MSPs are.  As I said, I know what MSIs are, and feel confident deleting them.

I also was hoping someone else had had experience/knowledge with Acrobat, and would know why it does this stupid thing.

I'm also thinking about uninstalling Acrobat (which uses tons of disk space even if it isn't stupidly downloading silly updates) and installing one of the freeware PDF viewers instead.

[snowsnowsnow]

Also curious about the "ARM" in the directory name...

[td]

You may have already encountered this but here is an Adobe technical support discussion that may be of some relevance:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/msp-files-accumulating-needed/td-p/3837513

No mentions of "ARM" though.