Windows PowerShell Script to Delete Old Files

Just starting to dab into PowerShell script after it has been in the wild for 8 years. Turns out to be surprisingly good. First you have a nice editor (PowerShell ISE), second is the vast amount of cmdlets that make coding go fast.

Here is a script to delete old files that are 30 days or older. It used to take at least 40 lines of VBS to achieve.

	$nDays = 30
	$path = "C:\temp"
	$threshold = (Get-Date).AddDays(-$nDays)
	Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse | Where-Object {
	-not $_.PSIsContainer -and $_.LastWriteTime -lt $threshold
	} | Remove-Item -Force

view raw Delete Old Files.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Before you get too excited, a few things to be aware of:

• Availability of PowerShell: WindowsXP may not have it, and Windows 7 may only have it up to version 2. So, if you found some exciting cmdlets, chances are they are not available on your OS by default
• Executing a PowerShell file takes extra effort. It's forbidden by default. So you have to do either of the following:
• Open PowerShell, and execute this command: 

         Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

• Or, when running a file use this command line (notice full path to the ps1 file has to be provided here): 

         PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass c:\scripts\myScript.ps1