Vista Gets Fat Over Time

[ClayMeow]

Unfortunately I haven't kept track of Vista's growth, but I'm almost certain, as a fresh install, it took significantly less than 25GB of space. But alas, today when I checked, my Windows directory was 25.07GB! EEK!

 

It could probably be attributed to a several things, but one of the main culprits is the WINSXS folder. For those that aren't familiar with this folder, here's a description. My WINSXS folder was 14.4GB, containing 54,548 files in 15,003 folders!

 

As the article states:

The safest way to clean it, is by simply uninstalling applications which you don't require. However, this too is not fool proof, as many applications still leave behind their files here, since they may be shared between other applications. So the probability of dud unused dll's being left behind is quite high.

 

And if you are into trying out new software or installing and uninstalling frequently, you may notice that your winsxs size is indeed large, as Vista will store multiple copies of these dll files, in order to let multiple applications without compatibility problem.

 

So maybe there is an added benefit to frequently reinstalling your OS....less disk space taken up! That's the only true way to decrease the size of that folder, but I'm trying something else, because i'm lazy and really really don't want to reinstall.

 

Though not nearly as effective as a clean install, I went to the folder and turned on "compression", choosing "ignore all" for the files that said "access denied" (since that just means those files are in use, I wouldn't really want them compressed anyways). For those that aren't aware, Windows file compression is not like using WinZip or WinRar...Windows and all your apps still have access to all the files, it'd just take a little longer to access, as your system will have to uncompress whenever it needs them. Since I have a quad-core processor, I don't think I'll see much of a performance decrease, if any.

 

I'll let you know if I encounter any problems, but I thought I'd share with you guys in case you too were wondering why your C drive was mysteriously "losing" free space.

 

PS. In case you were wondering, I installed Vista (Home Premium 64) on 10/28/2007, so that's why my folder is so huge.

[Hyper Threaded]

Just noticed that with mine, the Windows folder is 23gb in total, 14gb on the winsxs folder. Strange that they never made it to delete those old files in winsxs that haven't been used in a while.

[GabrielT]

I've noticed this too, I decided to check my hard drive free space and couldn't believe I was using up 150gigs. I just couldn't figure out what it all was then whammy almost 30gb windows folder. And the other 120 or so is just random crap I rarely use but it adds up. Glad I added that 160gb to the existing 250.

[00stevo]

Thats one of the reasons i got rid of vista.I made a 40gb partition just for vista thinking it would be plenty.But after doing all my updates,i had only around 6gb left! Unreal.

[Verran]

So maybe there is an added benefit to frequently reinstalling your OS....

YES!!!!! :thumbs-up:

 

This is why I reinstall like a bodily function I've got my full Vista install with apps down under a half hour

 

Windows uses planned obsolescence. Anyone who's ever formatted any version of Windows after a few years will see this.