Hard Drive Space Problems

I think Eldon may be onto something with SP1 and Disk Cleanup, but I believe I have noticed something else. After running the cleanup to get rid of updates remnants, I no longer see the category in Disk Cleanup. Does this mean that DC simply does not report them if there aren't any? I do see some other categories that contain no data, which would go against that. Anyway, it's not there anymore for me.

I ran across a way to set a profile for Disk Cleanup using command line. Then you create a task and add a command reference to the profile, DC will use the profile, no matter what you have selected in the boxes in CD. I run this every AM on a schedule, and that causes me to wonder if there is a direct 1:1 correlation between the lack of updates remnants and the lack of the category in DC.

Struggling to understand how I managed to get so much space back. If I had known that categories appear and disappear in DC, I would have Notepadded the exact settings I used. Does this situation call for one of the edgier cleaner programs perhaps? My a-v (360 Total Security) has a cleaner that can do a super deep clean. I don't go there, and I never use it, but maybe one of the really deep cleaners would find all the installation remnants on Chairman Woods' PC.

Anyone have a recommendation? I would say run CCleaner, but I uncheck so many things, that I would have a hard time advising on its use. Eldon, I noticed Wise Care is free through Dec 26. Think Chairman Wood should give it a try? I'm kind of chomping at the bit to try Wise Care. It's been over two years I guess since I tried anything from Wise. Kind of unforgiving without keen oversight I felt at the time...

 

AltBo,
That's a difficult call.
Both Wise Care Pro 365 and Advanced SystemCare 9 Pro are currently available for free.
But, they are powerfull programs and in the wrong hands...

The problems are those first 3 folders - almost 32 GB!
Chairman Wood should concentrate on first cleaning up the winsxs folder. It's more than 18 GB.

 

Just installed Wise Care. It has an entire category for system related files. Here are some of the ones in the list:

Windows Downloaded Installation Files
Windows Installer Baseline Cache
Sample Pictures
Sample Videos

It says I can get 2.2 GB from removing Windows Installer Baseline Cache. Only thing that concerns me is that this might be Windows updates unistallers. Thinking of the debate about removing those that there used to be. No way to remove updates in XP without the uninstallers...

 

Here is some info on removing Windows Installer Baseline Cache:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/windows-installer-baseline-cache-safe-delete-it.341036/

I do believe (might be wrong) that Windows Disk Cleanup in SP1 of W7 reports Windows Installer Baseline Cache files for removal. However, it may only target Windows files in the folder, so running WiseCare for this might not be such a great idea if there are files from other programs in there too.

There is a great "Big Files Manager" in there that might help...

Stumped as to why my Windows folder is so much lighter than others. I have blocked the Windows updates for W10, and I wonder if maybe Chairman Wood has on his PC space eating preparations for the installation 10 in this situation..

 

This is interesting:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2795190

Making SP1 permanent shouldn't be a problem for anyone I wouldn't think at this point. If Chairman Wood doesn't have it, though, he would have to add it. Who knows what that would add space-wise, but I think he should add it anyway for performance and enhancements. That seems most important to me before looking into the space issue. There must be a way to get Chairman Wood's drive down to the 40 GB range...

 

I've got basically the same problem as Chairman Wood with a 37GB Windows folder, and I have used all the advice in the link I posted in #46 to try to reduce it. It was 38GB before so all my efforts have just saved 1GB. The DriverStore folder itself in System32 is 12GB and I can't reduce it at all, not even when using DriverStore Explorer. So I think the OP is up against it trying to downsize the big subfolders in Windows. Maybe cloning the system to a 120GB SSD is the only realistic way forward. Or upgrading to 10 and clean installing 10 after the upgrade. (You can't clean install before upgrading).

 

I will take note about the images.

I just downloaded from the link above and I get a prompt from Windows Update Standalone Installer that says " Update for Windows (KB2852386) is already installed on this computer."

I also note that by right-clicking on my computer that I have Service Pack 1.

I've been trying to run through the steps from the article that Earthling posted above:
http://www.howtogeek.com/174705/how-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-winsxs-folder-on-windows-7-or-8/

I've tried to run Windows Update in order to proceed. My updates fail as you can see in the screenshot below.

 

That often happens when you try to update manually. Wait until the updates icon appears in the system tray and click on it.

 

I am trying but I cannot find a location tab. This is what it looks like for me.

There is space to be gained here but not anything over a gig.

 

I'd be willing to try something more drastic in like a week. I have a lot of work that needs to get done using the computer before that time. Afterwards, it could be an option.

 

Might I be able to clean up winsxs if I get this update to run?

 

You are showing me properties in Libraries. You need to find the actual folders on your C drive.

 

Ok, thanks for the pointer. With your help I was able to successfully move all the "My" folders. That freed up about a GB.


Can/Should I do that with other folders on the C drive like "Desktop?"

 

No. Only Windows knows what to delete from the winsxs folder.

 

No. The Desktop folder contains all your shortcuts. Mine is less than 1 MB.

 

I am trying to make the SP installation permanent as stated in the article but the only real instructions I see stated are :

• Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 installed: DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded or Disk Cleanup Wizard (cleanmgr.exe)

I'm not sure how to do this or even where to start

 

Chairman Wood, I think we're fighting a losing battle.
My Windows 7 Ultimate folder is less than 9 GB. But, I don't have SP1 or any updates installed.
I believe your only realistic option is a bigger capacity SSD (or HDD).

 

Alright thank you for help.

What I still don't understand though is that my Disk Cleanup can't get to the Windows Update folder even though I have SP1. I also don't understand why my attempts to update Windows all fail. I'd like to do the suggestions that the article that Earthling posted but I can't do the necessary previous steps.

 

I think the Windows updates might be failing due to the limited space available. Windows needs space to work.

 

Chairman Wood...

I turned on a program called Toolwiz TimeFreeze and tried the DISM command at an Administrator Command Prompt. This command:

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded or Disk Cleanup Wizard

I got access denied, meaning it wouldn't work. I did some reading and it turns out a-vs block this action sometimes, so I turned off a-v, but it still didn't work.

TimeFreeze (free here at MGs) is like system restore. It freezes your system making it possible for you to try things like this. When you are done, if there aren't any problems, you just turn off TimeFreeze and keep the changes. If there are problems, you just turn off TimeFreeze and select to roll back the changes. TF doesn't work for operations that require a reboot, because it won't restore beyond a reboot. In this case, it would work fine if you would like to try the command line. All the command will do is get rid of SP1 leftovers in the winsxs folder if it possibly can.

You could just open command prompt->Start->programs->Accessories->right click on Command Prompt->Select "Run as Administrator"->copy the above command line and paste it at the prompt. Click Enter to run the command. Since the info is from MS, it's probably perfectly safe to run this. However, you should be getting the option to remove Service Pack Backup Files (as they are called) in Disk Cleanup. This is the same thing as the command above, but, since you apparently aren't seeing that option, I thought you could try this way.

One other option is to download a cleaner and see what it comes up with. A scan can't hurt. I took a look at WiseCleaner, and it has some nice features that might help you, and it strikes me as worth a try. You don't have to remove anything after a scan, so it's safe in that way. Wise Cleaner Pro is free through Dec 26 if you would like to try that. Here is the link:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/wise_care_pro_365_giveaway.html

Beyond this, I am not sure what could be causing the issue. The only thing I can think of is that maybe W10 is partially downloaded for installation. There are preparation updates from MS that are supposed to gather info for the installation, so maybe this has something to do with what's happening. If you would like to know more, please let me know. You may have to remove some updates, which most of here at MGs have removed or not installed. Then you must hide them, so that they won't redownload...

 

I agree with this. I feel certain this is your problem with updates

 

Chairman Wood...

Don't run the initial scan of Wise Cleaner should you decide to try the program. I'm not sure what it does. At the top of the program interface, click on the system clean tab (or whatever it's called...something clean). Next look for the system something tab on the left. Take a look at what is there. Any questions just ask.

There is also a general clean tab on the left that you can use to safely run a scan for removable items. Ask about any items you find before removing.

The "Big File" option (the lowest of the tabs left) works very well. You can click on that to see which files on the system are very large...

 

Chairman Wood...

Just caught this. This is the command to type at the command prompt:

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

The command line in the earlier post didn't work because I copied the text from a web page which was listing two options side by side. The above will work. I just tried it on a W7 PC here. It will remove Windows Updates leftovers if it finds any. It didn't find any on my W7 PCs, because I had already removed them with Disk Cleanup...

BTW, both of my W7 PCs that I run side by side are at about 21.5 GB in size for the Windows folder. Wish I could figure out what's going on, but I feel it must have something to do with the W10 upgrade...

Apologies

 

That's less than one GB larger than mine (I compress a few folders in there - Inf, Logs and the hosts files, probably saving another 2-300MB).

 

I noticed that Satrow, but thanks for pointing it out. OP could definitely look into that in his situation. From what I understand winsxs would NOT be a good folder to compress, since it is an amalgamation of files that are actually used frequently sometimes to tie things together at lower levels of Windows.

I actually went into Windows a few hours ago on the 2nd machine here and somehow memory.dmp was in there. Windows was actually about 22.5 GB on that PC until I got rid of it which was around 780 MB I think.

I read where someone in the same situation used two identical drives in RAID 1 to double the disk size. They were SSDs as with the OP.

That's a great idea, compressing those folders. I might look into that at some point, but compression scares me at this right now. Seems like a deep topic to get into. I been working on sandboxing and some other security type applications, so I haven't had much time...

I wish I could understand why OP's Windows folder is so much higher. All I did was run the Disk Cleanup utility, and he's already done that...

 

I'm on SSD so compression/decompression is no big deal - for the right type of folders/data - I only compress data that's rarely used and are basically text files.

Compressing files/folders that are frequently used or that don't compress well would be a waste of resources/CPU time, esp. on a HDD. No, don't compress Winsxs!

~A couple of possibilities to consider for the OP's scenario: hard links - could these be involved? If the original install was pre-SP1, ie. years old, might there have been corruption at some point that prevents removal of superseded items installed prior to that time?

 

Thanks for the pointers.

Looks like that might be something Earthling could shine some light on, since his W7 installation folder seem to be roughly the same size as the OP's.

This one is driving me crazy. It happens from time to time, but 15+ gigs is definitely something to understand here for me...

 

Read my #56 on page 3

 

Chairman Wood...

Noticed something today you might like to look into. If you don't use hibernation (this is not the same as the sleep function), you can disable it and then follow the instructions here to get a large chunk of space back:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15140/what-is-hiberfil.sys-and-how-do-i-delete-it/?PageSpeed=noscript

Noticed the files on my drives, too. Hibernation seems kind of unnecessary for a desktop for the most part, but I can see how it could be useful on a laptop...

 

Chairman Wood - tell me please, using TreeSize as Administrator, how big is the folder Windows\System32\DriverStore? Mine was 12GB but is already down to 10GB and I've hardly started with thinning it down. I expect to get it down to 5GB or less but the procedure is a bit time consuming. If yours is anything at all like mine it will contain dozens of driver duplications and superceded drivers but you need DriverStore Explorer to assemble the data into an intelligible form and remove anything.

I've also got a brainwave about losing the entire 12GB by removing DriverStore entirely from the Windows folder, storing it on a different drive, and using symbolic links to access it but that's for later as implementation would not be straightforward.

AtlBo's suggestion of removing hibernation might also be worth looking into..

 

It's a good call to look at the DriverStore folder.
Mine's 767 MB.

 

We'll see. I checked the first ever image I took of this system when new and the DriverStore folder was 12GB then, so it was put there by the system builder, PCSpecialist Ltd, rather than by MS or software installs. Currently I'm down from 12GB to 4GB only removing duplicates rather than versions and everything is OK.

 

1.2 GB in the DriverStore folder (in the C:\windows\system32 folder) here...

This is an old prefab HP 6200. Wonder if the prefabbers use the DriverStore less in their PCs than other PC builders...

 

I'm down to 1.5GB now so this may not be of that much benefit to the OP. We'll see when we know how big his is - and no laughing please

 

http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/laughing/laughing-my-ass-off-smiley-emoticon.gif