Winxs: Why my Vista install bloated to 28GB
Posted on 24th Jul 2009 at 12:46 by Clive Webster with 30 comments
For some reason the C: partition of my media PC is pretty much full, despite me giving the OS 30GB and only having a few apps installed. The culprit is the mysterious winsxs folder, which has piled on the pounds in the year or so the PC has been working, and now weighs in at 15GB. Things is, I had no idea what the folder was when trying to trim some space last night.
A quick Google search revealed that I shouldn't manually delete the myriad files and folders within the winsxs as the folder is actually a library of redundant and not so redundant dlls. Apparently the folder has been present in Windows since Win 95, but Vista seems more prone to excessive folder sizes.
So, I couldn't just treat the winsxs folder like a temp folder and clear everything out; you need to be careful when deleting dlls upon which all your porgrams rely. But I didn't really want to re-size the OS partition on the disk either - 30GB really should be enough, and I wanted to save as much space on the other partition for my collection of completely legal, copyright-free, certainly not BitTorrented videos.
I found some help from a Microsoft employee on this thread complaining about a large winsxs folder. If you've got Vista SP1, there is a tool to trim the winsxs folder, as long as you don't mind losing the ability to ever uninstall SP1. That reeks of SP1 not having a proper clean-up routine after it installs, but hey, I thought I'd run it anyway.
The tool is in C:\Windows\System32 and is called "vsp1cln.exe." Running it took about five minutes of hard disk thrashing, the end results of which was 7GB of apparently completely redundant data being deleted. Well, that'll keep things happy for now. Although as I'm talking about Media PC, I'm expecting some completely random and unforeseeable issue arising as a consequence of me using vsp1cln that renders the whole system as useful as a spear in a gunfight.
Does anyone else know any tricks to shrink the bloat of an ageing Vista install? Apart from uninstall/reinstall, of course - I really can't be bothered to go through the pain of getting codecs to work with Media Center all over again!
A quick Google search revealed that I shouldn't manually delete the myriad files and folders within the winsxs as the folder is actually a library of redundant and not so redundant dlls. Apparently the folder has been present in Windows since Win 95, but Vista seems more prone to excessive folder sizes.
So, I couldn't just treat the winsxs folder like a temp folder and clear everything out; you need to be careful when deleting dlls upon which all your porgrams rely. But I didn't really want to re-size the OS partition on the disk either - 30GB really should be enough, and I wanted to save as much space on the other partition for my collection of completely legal, copyright-free, certainly not BitTorrented videos.
I found some help from a Microsoft employee on this thread complaining about a large winsxs folder. If you've got Vista SP1, there is a tool to trim the winsxs folder, as long as you don't mind losing the ability to ever uninstall SP1. That reeks of SP1 not having a proper clean-up routine after it installs, but hey, I thought I'd run it anyway.
The tool is in C:\Windows\System32 and is called "vsp1cln.exe." Running it took about five minutes of hard disk thrashing, the end results of which was 7GB of apparently completely redundant data being deleted. Well, that'll keep things happy for now. Although as I'm talking about Media PC, I'm expecting some completely random and unforeseeable issue arising as a consequence of me using vsp1cln that renders the whole system as useful as a spear in a gunfight.
Does anyone else know any tricks to shrink the bloat of an ageing Vista install? Apart from uninstall/reinstall, of course - I really can't be bothered to go through the pain of getting codecs to work with Media Center all over again!
30 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyIf XP doesn't get as bloated by keeping older files why does vista? That's what I don't understand =\
other than the tweaks and cleaning out temp/duplicate files, don't know how to shrink it
*edit* actually if you shoot a email over to the guys at start64.com.. they will probably write an article on it
32bit: (3.02 GB (3,243,413,504 bytes))
MD5: a1c024d7abaf34bac3368e88efbc2574
SHA1: aaee3c04533899f9f8c4ae0c4250ef5fafbe29a3
64bit: (3.59 GB (3,861,460,992 bytes))
MD5: 19ca90a425667812977bab6f4ce24175
SHA1: 25ad9a776503e6a583bec07879dbcc5dfd20cd6e
BTW the entire virtual HDD is only using 11.5GB of space, I only have a Firefox installed and a few very small security applications.
I know alot of guys who reinstall like it's some sort of spring cleaning lol I found not really necessary, even on the older os's you can keep it running smoothly.. the bloat over time never really thought about too much- but now that I looked like hanlon says- what has been seen, cannot be unseen :D
I have Vista SP2.
It is located in c:\windows\winsxs
Andy
Well the folder winsxs is in Windows 7 RC... mine is 5.73GB
I have been using Win7 RC since the day it was released. My Vista SP2 has winsxs and it's 12.7GB, I have it since Feb 2009.
That's easy. Install XP using an iso that already SP3. Turn down all caching in browsers to reasonable levels. Disable java cache in the control panel if you have it installed lol. Install plenty of ram so it doesn't use the swap file and disable the swap file. Disable hiberation file with powercfg-h command and delete the file if it still exists after that. Disable system restore. Use R-Wipe to schedule routine deletion of temp files from all sorts of places you never knew existed. Oh yea, uninstall internet explorer and windows features also in the add/remove.
Follow a guide for nLite?
PS: maybe not directly on topic but acting smarmy to Windows owners is a hard earned privilege.
XD that's good enough for a sig goodbytes
As for the article/blog: 30GB is a bit big, though. Personally, I felt a bit "disappointed" when a full gNewSense install took up ~2.5GB (IIRC). My main computer (Debian) uses 1.73GB; with a full desktop environment it would be ~200-300MB more. (Making a comparison between GNU/Linux and MS Windows HD space is very silly, but I'm using this to explain my "feelings" below.)
I know storage is cheap (and I know that I am cheap when it comes to storage), but isn't there some kind of moral reasoning? It's not just because storage is cheap, that so much of it should be used for just running the PC. :|
Or am I (as is often the case) the only one who cares about this, and is the above "argument" null for everyone else? I.e., do others just not care that much about the storage? (Until it reaches ridiculous levels, like what is in essence a temp folder taking up 15GB.)
Sorry about that, just wanted to be snooty for once. I know Linux isn't for everybody and likewise isn't unbreakable, but that more my fault than linuxes. Also I run dual boot, untill ofcourse swapping hardrives to new hardware made WinXP give up.
I have seen the light of ways and am repentant and seek forgiveness from the almighty Kernels.
PS: I'm NOT being sarcastic.
Definitely see your point - on my Media PC it's not too much of an issue as I've got a 750GB disk and could extend the OS partition. Mechanical storage is, as you say, cheap.
However, I'm now a touch worried about the switch to an SSD that I'd like to take - 128GB of SSD speediness might get gobbled up by an unruly winsxs folder pretty quickly!
Well, in you case it could be system restore points.
You can clear them up, but then it will clear the ability to go (or view to access) back in time on a file, folder, drive, or system.
30GB is not enough, you need AT LEAST 50GB, if you want the ability to use system restore point and go really back in time over a few days, and not worry about clearing it.
My winsxs folder is at 14Gb and could do with trimming down!
I'm on SP2 if that makes a difference...
I do have a vsp1cln.exe in "C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-v..ck-uninstallremoval_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6001.18000_none_dc83934b9415d3b6" but it does not do anything (even when running as administrator)...
Cheers,
Doggeh
Compcln.exe, should restore HDD space by permanently deleting the previous versions of the files (like when you go from SP1 to SP2) and there is no way of getting them back also.
To accomplish this :
Open a command prompt (start then type 'CMD')
Type in Compcln.exe
It prompts to make SP2 permanent on your computer, meaning you can't go back to SP1 once you run it.
That's it.