August 6, 2020 at 2:06 pm
I have some time on my hands (sadly) and am using some of it to clean up my computer. The computer in question runs Windows 7 (no, 'upgrading' to Windows 10 is not an option) and I have used it for many years. Over time, I have installed at least three versions of MS SQL, the latest seeming to be MS SQL 2016.
While looking to clean things up, I found the following folders:
Some internet searching leads me to believe that these folders are related to MS SQL, but I couldn't find anything about them. Note that these are typical user folders, with all of the expected sub-directories.
My question is simply this: Are these folders needed or would it be safe to delete them? Thanks!
August 6, 2020 at 5:41 pm
anything in the "users" folder is for a user account. so those 3 folders are user accounts you have or had on your system at some point.
If I remember right (been a while since I did windows 7 support), deleting things out of the c:\Users folder directly will leave a mess on your system and may make some services and/or scheduled tasks fail to start. I think the recommended way to do it is from the control panel, but these accounts may not exist there.
I believe you can remove them from MMC (start->run->type in mmc and press enter. Next press ctrl+m, select "local users and groups" and find the 3 users you mentioned and you can remove them).
Something to note - if you have anything that runs that relies on these user accounts, it WILL break. This includes scheduled tasks, applications, services, etc.
If you are still using SQL Server, I strongly recommend that you do NOT touch those folders or accounts as they MAY be in use. If you are NOT using SQL Server and have uninstalled it, then you should be safe to remove them.
Before removing any user account you are uncertain of, I would be sure you can recover it with the same password it has now. If you are not certain that you can do that, I would take a full backup first.
NOW, all of that being said, how large are these user profiles? i am expecting you are looking at cleaning it up more because you want your computer to have fewer files and folders on it, not because you are trying to safe a few MB of disk by removing them. My opinion, I tend to leave system folders alone on my computer. This includes program files, program files (x86), programdata, windows, system volume information, recycle bin (which I empty, but very very rarely actually open up and look in), and Users with the exception of my own profile, unless one of the user profiles is abnormally large.
The above is all just my opinion on what you should do.
As with all advice you find on a random internet forum - you shouldn't blindly follow it. Always test on a test server to see if there is negative side effects before making changes to live!
I recommend you NEVER run "random code" you found online on any system you care about UNLESS you understand and can verify the code OR you don't care if the code trashes your system.
August 6, 2020 at 6:04 pm
Those are from virtual accounts for SQL Server. You can find more information on the virtual accounts in the documentation on service accounts:
Configure Windows Service Accounts and Permissions
Sue
Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply