While the vast majority of the servers present in the environment I work in are running 2012 R2 and 2016, we still have some 2008 R2’s lingering. One of the features that is noticeably missing is the fact that the Disk Cleanup utility is not present on anything running 2012 or 2008 R2. Since our local C: drives are reaching capacity and need some cleanup, it was imperative that this feature be installed. Here’s a simple step by step guide provided by Microsoft on how to get this accomplished…
1. Open The Roles and Features Wizard
To open the Roles and Features Wizard, launch the “Server Manager”:
2. Click on “Add Roles and Features”
3. Choose installation Type
Choose “Role-based or feature-based installation” to install to the local machine:
4. Click Next all the way to features
Locate “User Interface and Infrastructure”. Click on “Desktop Experience” and install additional required features:
5. Proceed with the installation and Reboot
6. Verify that the Utility is indeed installed
See screen shot below:
7. Disk Cleanup in Action
Below is a sample snapshot of disk cleanup in action:
So it was brought to my attention that the “Disk Cleanup” feature can also be added without enabling “Desktop Experience” and having to reboot the server. See the links below for further details…
https://support.appliedi.net/kb/a110/how-to-enable-the-disk-cleanup-tool-on-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2008-R2-and-2008/ff630161(v=ws.10)