What is patchcleanerrevisited?

PatchCleaner Revisited is a Windows tool that helps advanced users find and clean up leftover installer files that pile up in the C colon Windows Installer folder over time. Windows keeps cached copies of MSI and MSP installer and patch files there so it can repair, update, or uninstall programs later, but files that are no longer connected to any installed program can build up and waste noticeable amounts of disk space. The project is inspired by an older tool called PatchCleaner by HomeDev, which has not been updated since 2016, depends on old .NET software, is distributed as an installer that antivirus tools often flag, and no longer matches how recent versions of Windows behave. Instead of an installed program, PatchCleaner Revisited is a single PowerShell script paired with a graphical interface, with no separate installer, no bundled binary, no background service, and no network calls, so the entire tool can be read and understood by anyone before they run it. The application shows a main window listing both registered and orphaned MSI and MSP files with details such as size, date, and signing information, lets you exclude certain vendors or products from cleanup, and includes a separate leftovers scanner that looks for files, folders, and registry entries connected to already removed packages, scoring each finding by how confident it is that the item is truly unused. It can also review older .NET patch versions, keeping the newest revision in each group while flagging older ones as candidates for removal. The README repeatedly stresses that this is a system maintenance tool, not a one click cleaner, because deleting the wrong file can break an application's ability to repair, update, or uninstall itself. Before doing anything beyond a dry run, it recommends creating a full backup, creating a Windows system restore point, verifying the backup actually restores, reviewing every selected item first, and reading the script's source code since it is intentionally kept short and unminified for that purpose. It also asks users to only run the official version of the script, not unverified forks. The tool requires Administrator privileges to run, works with PowerShell 5.1 or 7 on Windows 10 or 11, and is released under the MIT license.