How do I reduce Vista's "bloat"?

[Mike in Nebraska]

I think you're right. My desktop runs Vista Business, Office 2007 Pro,
Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, SharePoint Designer, etc. and I
only filled ~58 GB.

Mike

 

[Mike in Nebraska]

I got it! Somehow I stumbled on C:\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6\Namespace and found
~70 GB of files that had been cached from users over the years. I took
ownership and deleted them, then hunted around and found a place to check
and uncheck users folders for offline caching and unchecked all but two
users. Now I've got a bit over 70GB of free space.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and comments. It all helped me get to
this point.

Mike

 

[DanS]

80 GB is a very small drive. Why not just simply get a much bigger
one? They don't cost very much.

Which is the attitude that brought us to such bloat anyway.

 

[I.C. Greenfields]

go to http://www.download.com/SpaceMonger/3000-2248_4-10050288.html
and d/l Spacemonger. It's free and will show a graphic of all files and
free space on your HD.
You might also have a bunch of $uninstall$ files from all your hotfixes
and updates....which can be deleted if you don't plan any uninstalls.

Where are these $uninstall$ files located in WE? They're not under
C:/Windows in Vista HPre.

 

[I.C. Greenfields]

go to http://www.download.com/SpaceMonger/3000-2248_4-10050288.html
and d/l Spacemonger. It's free and will show a graphic of all files and
free space on your HD.
You might also have a bunch of $uninstall$ files from all your hotfixes
and updates....which can be deleted if you don't plan any uninstalls.

How do you read the little pictures on the right hand side? Where are the
HELP files? How do you supposed to know what they mean?

 

[Tyro]

And there will be much, much more of it as disk, including flash type
storage, and memory costs drop so much they become insignificant.

Tyro

 

[DanS]

And there will be much, much more of it as disk, including flash type
storage, and memory costs drop so much they become insignificant.

The bloat I speak of is mainly in the OS that runs the programs that
allow us to use the gigs and gigs of data of one type or another.

The programs too. For instance, Acrobat Reader is a 20meg d/l, and when
installed adds all of this other Adobe junk as well, and all I want to do
is read PDF's. Foxit reader is, IIRC, under 3 Megs, and allows me to view
the same PDF's. Foxit also loads blazingly fast compared to Acrobat
reader.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Thanks for the update - we need more happy endings these days

From what you reported, you are *very* lucky to have stayed sane through
this one...

Your story did make me look into SequoiaView and other graphic file/folder
size display programs, but I'm a bit scared to use them on Vista 64 (I've
used a couple on XP). Still, they would find a problem like yours
relatively directly.

 

[Saucy]

An odd thing ... I didn't have "Files from all users on this computer" as
an item to check-mark under Disk Cleanup Options.

Run Disk Cleanup specifically as an administrator and it won't ask. Run it
as a user and it will ask.

Saucy

 

[Saucy]

I got it! Somehow I stumbled on C:\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6\Namespace and found
~70 GB of files that had been cached from users over the years. I took
ownership and deleted them, then hunted around and found a place to check
and uncheck users folders for offline caching and unchecked all but two
users. Now I've got a bit over 70GB of free space.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and comments. It all helped me get to
this point.

Mike

Wow. What is that folder for? I don't want to take ownership right now as I
don't want to screw with the system, but I am curious.

Thanks
Saucy

 

[Gordon]

Wow. What is that folder for? I don't want to take ownership right now as
I don't want to screw with the system, but I am curious.

http://www.winvistaclub.com/f16.html

 

[Saucy]

I've got a 3-yr old Dell laptop that I recently upgraded to Vista Business
from WinXP Pro with SP3. It's a spare for the staff and it has been
checked out. The staff member came back to say the HDD was almost full, I
checked and saw that only 7 GB of the 80 GB total was free. So I
uninstalled a bunch of programs and windows components she didn't need or
want, ran Disk Cleanup, Defrag .... I was only able to reclaim 3 GB.
Downloaded a trusty defrag program I use - JK Defrag - and ran it. Only
gained another GB. Rebooted a couple times and re-ran JK Defrag. No gain.
Checked the folder sizes and saw that the WINSXS folder was huge. Checked
it via Google and saw that I can't really get rid of it.

Short of re-formatting the HDD and starting over, what else can I do to
reclaim disk space? I'm guessing that Defrag and JK Defrag aren't doing
so well becuase they have less than 10 GB of "wiggle room" to work with.

--
Mike Webb
Platte River Whooping Crane Maintenance Trust, Inc.
a conservation non-profit (501 (c)(3)) organization
Wood River, NE

You can disable offline files in the Control Panel to prevent this from
happening again.

Start > Control Panel > switch to 'Classic' view if not already > Offline
Files > click the "Disable Offline Files" button > click any OKs

Notice that the applet says you have to reboot for it to take effect.

Saucy