reducing windows size

The folder winsxs exists on my system, which is a result of a clean install.
It contains numerous folders and files with a size of about 3.2 GB. As I
didn`t upgrade, it doesn`t seem to be a good idea to remove these
(sub-)folders.

"Tom McDonald" <tmcdonald@satx.rr.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:98C649BB-7F9B-4AB2-9D4C-6C9E7A0E3D8D@microsoft.com...

>I upgraded from XP Pro to Vista RC2. I was looking on my drive and noticed
>that the windows folder is 9GB. Are there any files or subfolders that can
>be safely removed in order to reduce the size of this? One of the
>subfolders called winsxs is 3GB with 4984 subfolders and from what I
>understand we aren't supposed to remove anything from there. That leaves
>6GB still. The windows temp file is empty.

I think you are going to find that VISTA is a large operating system
(particularly Ultimate). Disk space is cheap.
--
Paul


"Tom McDonald" wrote:

> I upgraded from XP Pro to Vista RC2. I was looking on my drive and noticed
> that the windows folder is 9GB. Are there any files or subfolders that can
> be safely removed in order to reduce the size of this? One of the subfolders
> called winsxs is 3GB with 4984 subfolders and from what I understand we
> aren't supposed to remove anything from there. That leaves 6GB still. The
> windows temp file is empty.
>
>

I have noticed that Ultimate installed on a blank hard drive will use about
15GB including the pagefile and hibernation file in a system with 2GB of
memory - the minimum useful amount. I think more of the cabs are retained
to help with adding new options and recovery, but I am not sure about this.
I just never looked and can't believe the OS has increased that much in
size.

"PaulB" <PaulB@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1F351CA0-3C87-4593-92AC-1A944380905F@microsoft.com...

>I think you are going to find that VISTA is a large operating system
> (particularly Ultimate). Disk space is cheap.
> --
> Paul
>
>
> "Tom McDonald" wrote:
>

>> I upgraded from XP Pro to Vista RC2. I was looking on my drive and
>> noticed
>> that the windows folder is 9GB. Are there any files or subfolders that
>> can
>> be safely removed in order to reduce the size of this? One of the
>> subfolders
>> called winsxs is 3GB with 4984 subfolders and from what I understand we
>> aren't supposed to remove anything from there. That leaves 6GB still. The
>> windows temp file is empty.
>>
>>

Are you guys taking in to consideration the contents of the folder
"windows.old". This folder can be quite large and, assuming you have
retrieved any files (images/documents, game stats) you need from this folder,
it can be safely deleted.
Windows creates the folder during and upgrade or a clean install. If you for
any reason uninstall and re-install Windows, another folder will be created
on the second install named windows.old.000...a third re-install
"windows.old.001" and so on. All these folders can be responsible for a lot
of wasteland and can be safely deleted.

tac

I must add that if you did a clean install of Vista over XP (on the same
partition) you might need the windows.old folder to boot into XP.

tac

"tacwalker" wrote:

> Are you guys taking in to consideration the contents of the folder
> "windows.old". This folder can be quite large and, assuming you have
> retrieved any files (images/documents, game stats) you need from this folder,
> it can be safely deleted.
> Windows creates the folder during and upgrade or a clean install. If you for
> any reason uninstall and re-install Windows, another folder will be created
> on the second install named windows.old.000...a third re-install
> "windows.old.001" and so on. All these folders can be responsible for a lot
> of wasteland and can be safely deleted.
>
> tac
>

I did an upgrade from XP but there is no windows.old folder anywhere. The
closest I could find was a hidden folder called $WINDOWS.~Q with 848MB in
it.

"tacwalker" <tacwalker@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7F186A4D-E542-4C17-9758-3253D1991565@microsoft.com...

> Are you guys taking in to consideration the contents of the folder
> "windows.old". This folder can be quite large and, assuming you have
> retrieved any files (images/documents, game stats) you need from this
> folder,
> it can be safely deleted.
> Windows creates the folder during and upgrade or a clean install. If you
> for
> any reason uninstall and re-install Windows, another folder will be
> created
> on the second install named windows.old.000...a third re-install
> "windows.old.001" and so on. All these folders can be responsible for a
> lot
> of wasteland and can be safely deleted.
>
> tac
>

Wel now Tom, that puzzles me. This windows.old folder holds many of your
files from your previous os. I allowed Vista to reformat and do a clean
install on the same drive I had XP. Vista created a folder named windows.old.
I then uninstalled Vista (driver problems) and reinstalled, and a folder
named windows.old.000 was created. Then, once more (more minor problems), I
uninstalled and re-installed Vista and a folder named windows.old.001 was
created. All 3 folders held a total of 50 gigs of data.

Look again Tom. If you can't find this folder, perhaps an installation
upgrade does not create a windows.old.

Cheers!

"Tom McDonald" wrote:

> I did an upgrade from XP but there is no windows.old folder anywhere. The
> closest I could find was a hidden folder called $WINDOWS.~Q with 848MB in
> it.
>
> "tacwalker" <tacwalker@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:7F186A4D-E542-4C17-9758-3253D1991565@microsoft.com...

> > Are you guys taking in to consideration the contents of the folder
> > "windows.old". This folder can be quite large and, assuming you have
> > retrieved any files (images/documents, game stats) you need from this
> > folder,
> > it can be safely deleted.
> > Windows creates the folder during and upgrade or a clean install. If you
> > for
> > any reason uninstall and re-install Windows, another folder will be
> > created
> > on the second install named windows.old.000...a third re-install
> > "windows.old.001" and so on. All these folders can be responsible for a
> > lot
> > of wasteland and can be safely deleted.
> >
> > tac
> >

>