Put Windows on a Diet

I was scrounging for disk space and found out that my windows directory tips the scales a little heavy at 40 gb.  I turned off system restore (which said it would delete all the restore points) without an appriciable gain in disk space.

I know I installed windows of a single 650 mb CD so either there is a lot of fluff in there or microsoft has found some absolutely fabulous file compression!

Anyone know how to make windows shed the extra pounds?

Turn on show hidden files, enter the Windows directory.

Find hidden folders by the name of - $NtUninstall***

e.g. $NtUninstallKB888113$, $NtUninstallKB890175$ etc

Select all those hidden $NtUninstall folders and delete them.

Next find the $NtServicePackUninstall$ folder which
is also hidden and delete that too.


I have never seen a Windows directory over 3Gb in
size. Did you install SP1, then SP2 with all the
patches in between? That could cause a lot of bloat.

If that is the case might I suggest if not just for
stabilities sake that you re-install Windows and
apply SP2 to a virgin XP.

Find out which folder is taking up this 40 GB and let us know. And try to do a disk cleaning (Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System stuff -> Disk cleaning)

My Windows folder is < 4 GB

John Melville, MD wrote:

I was scrounging for disk space and found out that my windows directory tips the scales a little heavy at 40 gb. 

Wow. That's really impressive. My Windows directory, after a year of wear-and-tear, is only a bit over 3GB.

In addition to other people's suggestions, get a good space-monitoring tool like SpaceMonger that can tell you exactly what's eating up the space.

ZippyV wrote:

My Windows folder is < 4 GB

Mine's 2.95GB with all patches for XP.

Wouldn't it be nice if 3rd party apps *couldn't* write to your windows folder (except Windows updates etc).  It would be so much easier to get stuff removed when you don't want it

Agreed... It is called user-mode

IMO apps should not be using the Windows folder anyway, they have a program files folder that should be enough...

Is this an upgrade from Windows 98? In that case, your user profile is also stored in the Windows folder (Windows\Profiles). Otherwise I have no idea what could make it so rediculously big.

I doubt mine will ever get to that size, i cant keep windows installed over a week lol

http://windirstat.sourceforge.net/

Manip wrote:

If that is the case might I suggest if not just for

stabilities sake that you re-install Windows and
apply SP2 to a virgin XP.

I prefer to slipstream service packs straight onto the CD image then burn it. Much easier and results in less stability issues.

Right now my C:\Windows\ dir is 1.98GB. With C:\Windows\system32\ taking up 1.01GB.

I think I found part of the problem.

29.5 gigs of client sided cache, (also known as offline files.)

Doesn't say where the other 6 gig went but its enough to finish the current project and flatten the machine.  I doubt I'll look into it any further.

Thanks for the advice.

PS: Windows XPS1 installed on a formatted machine, upgraded to SP2 using windows update.  Lots of programs installed and uninstalled over about 1 year.

This may give some of you a heart-attack, but I have never reinstalled Windows *ever* since 95 (only ever upgraded version) and my Windows folder only weighs 2.95 gb.