Recently I came across an environment that hadn’t been upgraded to Windows Server 2012 and was still running Windows Server 2008 R2. Many of the system drives where closing in on capacity and I needed to free up space. After attempting to install the Desktop Experience Feature and rebooting I noticed Disk Cleanup was not available on the start menu under Accessories and the button wasn’t present on the C drive when right clicking and selecting Properties.
There is another way to get Disk Cleanup on the system if this route still doesn’t give you Disk Cleanup. This is not the recommended method but it is a workaround. This is not endorsed by Microsoft.
Copy the file from: C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_c9392808773cd7da\cleanmgr.exe
To: C:\Windows\system32 (if C:\Windows is your system root)
Then Copy the file: C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_en-us_b9cb6194b257cc63\cleanmgr.exe.mui
To: C:\Windows\system32\en-US (if C:\Windows is your system root)
More information is available at: