Delete user profiles in Windows 2000 Pro with Delprof.exe

The Delprof.exe tool included with the Windows 2000 Resource Kit makes it easy to remove user profiles locally or on a remote computer. Find out how this tool can save you time and help you free up space on the drive.

User profiles store documents, application settings, certain temporary files, custom colors, and more. A single user’s profile can be quite large; when multiple users share a computer, the profiles can take up a considerable amount of space.

When a user stops using a particular shared computer, you can typically delete the profile to free up space on the drive for other users, applications, temporary files, and so on. While you could delete the folder structure manually, doing so can be very time consuming. What’s more, you might need to remove a profile on a remote computer.

The Delprof.exe tool included with the Windows 2000 Resource Kit makes it easy to remove user profiles locally or on a remote computer. Delprof.exe can delete profiles on computers running Windows NT or later (except for Windows 9x or ME machines).

Delprof.exe supports several command-line arguments that let you specify the target computer, run the tool in quiet mode, force continuation when an error occurs, and cause the tool to prompt for verification before deleting the profile. You can also specify a number of days of inactivity, and Delprof.exe will delete any profiles that have seen no activity for that period or longer.

To view the syntax for Delprof.exe, execute the following command:

delprof /?