Stop the Windows Modules Installer service.
If your Windows 7 or 2008 R2 hard drive is overwhelmed by log files, here's what to do: There are incorrect solutions to the problem all over the web, but one approach seems to end the madness. The result is a deadly embrace between TrustedInstaller (the Windows Modules Installer Service) and the CAB compressor (makecab.exe), which throws off enormous volumes of useless Temp files and sucks up cycles like nobody's business. Microsoft's makecab.exe chokes on files bigger than 2GB. The basic idea is that once the Trusted Installer CBS log in C:\Windows\Logs\CBS grows to more than 2GB, the CAB compression utility (which Microsoft prefers to the far more common Zip) can't handle it. This is repeated until the system runs out of drive space. The process fails every time, and also consumes a new ~ 100 MB in \Windows\Temp before dying. After this, the cleanup process runs repeatedly (approx every 20 minutes in my experience). The log file is renamed to CbsPersist_date_time.log, but when the makecab process attempts to compress it the process fails (but only after consuming some 100 MB under \Windows\Temp). However, when the cbs.log reaches a size of 2 GB before that cleanup process compresses it, the file is too large to be handled by the makecab.exe utility. When "cbs.log" reaches a certain size, a cleanup process renames the log to "CbsPersist_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.log" and then attempts to compress it into a. I've found that this is caused by large Component-Based Servicing logs. Upon removing the files & rebooting, the files start being generated again. I've had repeated instances where a Windows 7 圆4 client runs out of hard drive space, and found that C:\Windows\TEMP is being consumed with hundreds of files with names following the pattern "cab_XXXX_X", generally 100 MB each, and these files are constantly generated until the system runs out of space. Poster jwalker107 on the Microsoft Answers forum describes the symptoms: The overflow files go into your Windows Temp folder, typically C:\Windows\Temp. If you delete the files, Windows kicks in every 20 minutes or so and starts generating 100MB files, continuously, until you run out of hard drive space - again. This is a known problem with Windows 7, 8, and 2008 R2 (and possibly other versions) where accumulated log files grow to an enormous size - 237GB according to one report. Alternatively, run Disc Cleanup to remove temporary files. You can use File Explorer to delete CAB files from the C:\Windows\Temp\ folder.
Having a hard time with Windows gobbling up your hard drive? You'll be interested to learn Microsoft has known about the problem for more than two years and done nothing about it. There's a manual fix, which I will discuss, but it isn't clear if this solution works in all cases. The cabinet files ( CAB-xxxx) files that you see in the C:\Windows\Temp\ folder are temporary files created by different Windows operations, like installing Updates.