outstandingly detailed and precise answer. THANX
plugginaway said:Can the c:\windows\installer folder be purged? It seems to be the
archive of the exes for updates. and if they are really old, and I
have purged the Uninstall info, Is it OK to dump these?
folder now at almost 2GB.
plugginaway said:Can the c:\windows\installer folder be purged? It seems to be the
archive of the exes for updates. and if they are really old, and I
have purged the Uninstall info, Is it OK to dump these?
folder now at almost 2GB.
Shenan said:2GB? That's not really that big. 2GB USB drives are now given
away like candy. ;-)
If you are worried about that little amount of space - thinking it
might make a difference - you might consider investing in a new
hard disk drive of larger size to replace your current one. Just
telling you this because sometimes the easiest solution is the
best. ;-)
However - you likely should do some cleanup...
Download/install this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301
After installing, do the following:
Start button --> RUN --> type in:
"%ProgramFiles%\Windows Installer Clean Up\msizap.exe" g!
--> Click OK.
(The quotation marks and percentage signs and spacing should be
exact.)
If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can
delete the uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has
installed... http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm
( Particularly of interest here - #4 )
( Alternative:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm )
You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but
your latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..
How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312
You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..
When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the
system's memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of
the hiberfil.sys file will always equal the amount of physical
memory in your system. If you don't use the hibernate feature and
want to recapture the space that Windows uses for the hiberfil.sys
file, perform the following steps:
- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start,
Settings, Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check
box, then click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting
Never under the "System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab
doesn't delete the hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power
Schemes tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.
You can control how much space your System Restore can use...
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and
click on the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I
suggest moving the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or
close to that...) 5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.
You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can
utilize...
Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores
to a size between 64MB and 128MB..
- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section,
do the following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:"
to something between 64MB and 128MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline
contents" (the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this
could take 2-10 minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open
Internet Explorer.
You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:
Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Other ways to free up space..
SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/
JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html
Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being
used.
In the end - a standard Windows XP installation with all sorts of
extras will not likely be above about 4.5GB to 9GB in size. If you
have more space than that (likely do on a modern machine) and most
of it seems to be used - likely you need to move *your stuff* off
and/or find a better way to manage it.
all good suggestions; and most of them peformed.
this is a laptop. so hate to do new HDD.
the msizap threw out 6 files and made hardly a dent in the 2.1GB
Installer folder.
???
Same for wondows\ie7updates?
thanx
I have accumulated 1.69 GB of RAW images just this year. I am certainly thatplugginaway said:2 GB i snot that big in toto, but in a single foldr??
anyway, justdoing a bit of cleanup. cleaned up about 8 GB in old music,
email archives, etc. And saw 'installer with a bunch.
$patchcache$ is 660MB for instance.
and a lot of the MSIs and MSPs are from old updates.
Do these files actually get used? or are they just archives for Uninstall
purposes?
thanx
plugginaway said:Can the c:\windows\installer folder be purged? It seems to be the
archive of the exes for updates. and if they are really old, and I
have purged the Uninstall info, Is it OK to dump these?
folder now at almost 2GB.
Shenan said:2GB? That's not really that big. 2GB USB drives are now given
away like candy. ;-)
If you are worried about that little amount of space - thinking it
might make a difference - you might consider investing in a new
hard disk drive of larger size to replace your current one. Just
telling you this because sometimes the easiest solution is the
best. ;-)
However - you likely should do some cleanup...
Download/install this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301
After installing, do the following:
Start button --> RUN --> type in:
"%ProgramFiles%\Windows Installer Clean Up\msizap.exe" g!
--> Click OK.
(The quotation marks and percentage signs and spacing should be
exact.)
If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can
delete the uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has
installed... http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm
( Particularly of interest here - #4 )
( Alternative:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm )
You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but
your latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..
How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312
You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..
When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the
system's memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of
the hiberfil.sys file will always equal the amount of physical
memory in your system. If you don't use the hibernate feature and
want to recapture the space that Windows uses for the hiberfil.sys
file, perform the following steps:
- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start,
Settings, Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check
box, then click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting
Never under the "System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab
doesn't delete the hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power
Schemes tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.
You can control how much space your System Restore can use...
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and
click on the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I
suggest moving the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or
close to that...) 5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.
You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can
utilize...
Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores
to a size between 64MB and 128MB..
- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section,
do the following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:"
to something between 64MB and 128MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline
contents" (the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this
could take 2-10 minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open
Internet Explorer.
You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:
Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Other ways to free up space..
SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/
JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html
Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being
used.
In the end - a standard Windows XP installation with all sorts of
extras will not likely be above about 4.5GB to 9GB in size. If you
have more space than that (likely do on a modern machine) and most
of it seems to be used - likely you need to move *your stuff* off
and/or find a better way to manage it.
all good suggestions; and most of them peformed.
this is a laptop. so hate to do new HDD.
the msizap threw out 6 files and made hardly a dent in the 2.1GB
Installer folder.
???
Shenan said:That means the stuff in there is still installed and has properly
working connections to something - thus the MSIZAP found no
substantially sized orphans.
- What size is this hard disk drive (total)?
- Is there something special about this system (it's a netbook,
it's got an SSD so it's smaller than normal, etc?)
- What does SequoiaView and/or JDiskReport (many find the latter
more informative) show as being your biggest space wasters?
- Are you actually *low* on space - or just trying to clear up space
'because'? ;-)
You could copy the contents of the folder to an external drive/DVD
then delete them and see what happens. Usually - you would likely
be fine - but there are cases where people deleted these files and
it came back to haunt them. Thus the backups. But 2.1GB - really
shouldn't make much of a dent in a true modern laptop (netbooks and
those with smaller SSDs being the exception - although I cannot see
getting a useful laptop with less than 32GB in any case - and I
would usually go with 160+GB. ;-) )
2 GB i snot that big in toto, but in a single foldr??
anyway, justdoing a bit of cleanup. cleaned up about 8 GB in old
music, email archives, etc. And saw 'installer with a bunch.
$patchcache$ is 660MB for instance.
and a lot of the MSIs and MSPs are from old updates.
Do these files actually get used? or are they just archives for
Uninstall purposes?
thanx
BTW, I use 'Foldersize' to see where my disk space goes. really
neat toy.
mombob said:Please help! My Windows Installer folder contains 141 GB (Gigabytes) of
files! I have a laptop with Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002
Service Pack 3. What could possibly be taking up THIS much space? I only
have 186GB on my Hard Drive to begin with.
Thanks for your input.
mombob
mombob said:Please help! My Windows Installer folder contains 141 GB
(Gigabytes) of files! I have a laptop with Windows XP Media Center
Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 3. What could possibly be taking
up THIS much space? I only have 186GB on my Hard Drive to begin
with.
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