A business I work with uses FileMaker for their point of sale (POS) system and lately has had all their PC’s hard drives fill with CAB files in the Windows Temp directory along with log files in the Windows Logs CBS folder. Apparently this behavior is caused by the Microsoft Windows Modules Installer (TrustedInstaller.exe), trying to create a CAB file of old logs and failing to do so over and over again. This appears in Windows 7, 8 and Server 2008, and is easily corrected. Follow the steps below:
CAB files in Windows Temp taking all free space
- Stop Windows Modules Installer service (already stopped in Windows 7 and 8)
- Delete everything in Windows\Temp (some items can’t be deleted)
- Delete everything in Windows\Logs\CBS (cbs.log can’t be deleted)
- Start Windows Modules Installer service
The service is always running in Windows Server 2008 but isn’t in Windows 7 and 8, but starting it will trigger the log creation process and it should correct itself and not go over the designated 50 MB default storage size.
While this removes the detritus from both folders it may come back again.
