windows folder is huge.. 8.2GB.. is there a way to clean it up?

There is no way windows needs 8.2GB to operate.. does anyone know how to possibly clean up the folder?
I figure it should only be 5 or so GB.

3.41GB is in C:\windows\winsxs
3.5GB is in C:\windows\System32

Heh, sounds good to me, my windows folder is 15gigs!

winsxs 7.4gb
system32 3.3gb

Wonder if there is a way to trim these folders a little.

My Windows folder is 16.2GB, and it was the very first time, I ever checked.
What would be the reason to play with Windows folder?

14-15GB is considered normal for a "typical" Vista install. It's debatable just how essential some of the files are, but that's the way it was designed.

You could probably clean out some files in there, but I suspect it would be at the cost of functionality. Vista is big...future OS's aren't going to get any smaller. It's the (tidal) wave of the future.

Byan, how big is your hard drive?

Byan could research vLite 1.2 and see if that might work out.

http://www.vlite.net/about.html

I refuse to use it.

FWIW, my Windows XP Pro's "C:\Windows" is almost 11 GB (10,857,970,291 bytes).

BTW, out of my 16GB, 3GB are taken by Erunt restore points.

2GB here.

thanks for the replies, I almost forgot I posted this =)

anyway, I'll look into vLite

my Vista partition is 16GB with only 700MB left over.

I installed SP1 and now the windows folder is 11.6GB...

EDIT: I looked briefly at vLite.. and it customizes the installation process.. I'm looking to make it smaller after the fact.

I am pretty sure that a large amount of the data is used by Vista's new dll system.. which is made to make sure things don't conflict... but at the same time. it should have many versions of each dll. At least thats how I understand it.. I wanted some sort of software that would search through there and purge any unneeded files

Quote:

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my Vista partition is 16GB with only 700MB left over.

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This is not good. Windows needs 15% of a free space.

and why does it "need" 15% free space?

So that it has room for temp files, and general working space.

Sounds like you are trying to pack 348 sardines in a 25-sardine can. Any Norwegian will tell you that's not good. You also need room for the oil. Your "Vista partition" sounds fishy to me.... :rolleyes:

Basically, you aren't giving your OS breathing room. You have to do this or you will start getting blue screens and other maladies. Trying to trim down the OS files simply to try squeezing it in a too small partition is not the answer. Like said before, these OS's need a lot of room and you can't get around that fact.

Vista and a 40 - 50 GB partition works out OK.

Probably cut a GB or there abouts just in IE, Tools Internet options and on the general tab limit the size of the tif and the History.

Adjust the amount of space dedicated for restore points, Windows takes 15% of the drive space, and several other items.

>_>

breathing room, hmm?
well, I assume that if it actually needs more room I'll actually run out of space.. not just have less than a GB of it..


either way, performance on vista while suffocating the install partition is perfectly fine.

I do admit that this partition size was designed for an XP install and that a 25GB partition would probably be better.. but I wanted to know if there was a way to get rid of the unnecessary files in that folder...

One of these days I need to resize it >_>

All you have to do is determine which files are unnecessary. And if you're lucky, you find a few megs worth you can delete.

You can adjust the size that the recycle bin is allocated...

Use DriveSpacio: http://www.drivespacio.f-sw.com/index.html to see what's going on there.

I use windirstat, same concept

...and?
What did you find out? What's taking space?

I had used it before I got here..

11.9GB is the windows folder
6.5GB is winsxs
3.5GB is System32
2.3GB is the page file, which I just realized I should move to a different partition and then did so
Users is 1.4GB.. which is largely temp files and game saves
Program files is 1.3GB which is largely openoffice and common files

Well, I said before, you can't trim off too much here, and 16GB partition is too small for Vista.
Repartition, or get bigger hD.

You don't seem to have a serious computer problem and hard drives are cheap---get a larger hard drive, smile and get on with life.