Trimming fat off Win7

This OS - though pretty good - is a HUGE space hog (over 21gB).

Any solutions - or links to threads that cover - to trimming Win7 down some? Like deleting unnecessary files and such?

In the past variations that was always an option. Now it seems it isn't.

Hmmm, I only see 11GB occupied by the OS, IE9 and a few other things. I wonder where the differences are?

Sorry, I don't know much about trimming this OS - I was just shocked to see that 21GB size in your post.

Turn off the hibernate option.

You could use Disk Cleanup:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/818-disk-cleanup-open-use.html

UsernameIssues said:

Hmmm, I only see 11GB occupied by the OS, IE9 and a few other things. I wonder where the differences are?

Sorry, I don't know much about trimming this OS - I was just shocked to see that 21GB size in your post.

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WinSXS could one of the main ones. My windows is 17gb, but it was only installed a month ago, over time it will grow. My WinSXS is 6gb of that.

You can uninstall other stuff through control panel, programs and features, turn windows featrures on or off.

There is some useful information over at Black Viper's Website is you want to tune it a bit more.

You could also consider shrinking your swap file if you have lots of ram and you don't hit it very often, but I'd do some research with that first. Or you could move it to another drive/partition.

You could also reduce the space used by system restore if you have that turned on. On large drives this can eat up as much as 10gb over a few weeks/months. If you drop it's percentage down you can keep fewer restore points and save space.

Fewer restore points could compromise your recoverability though..

good luck

TanyaC said:

UsernameIssues said:

Hmmm, I only see 11GB occupied by the OS, IE9 and a few other things. I wonder where the differences are?

Sorry, I don't know much about trimming this OS - I was just shocked to see that 21GB size in your post.

Click to expand...

WinSXS could one of the main ones. My windows is 17gb, but it was only installed a month ago, over time it will grow. My WinSXS is 6gb of that.

You can uninstall other stuff through control panel, programs and features, turn windows featrures on or off.

There is some useful information over at Black Viper's Website is you want to tune it a bit more.

You could also consider shrinking your swap file if you have lots of ram and you don't hit it very often, but I'd do some research with that first. Or you could move it to another drive/partition.

You could also reduce the space used by system restore if you have that turned on. On large drives this can eat up as much as 10gb over a few weeks/months. If you drop it's percentage down you can keep fewer restore points and save space.

Fewer restore points could compromise your recoverability though..

good luck

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I've noticed (but not tracked) the growth of the WinSXS area. It is not a problem for me since I only have W7 in a frozen Virtual Machine. I'm familiar with Black Viper's site (and others) as they apply to XP since I have several trimmed down XP VMs. I've not taken the time to dig into cleaning W7 VMs. One good thing about VMs: the system restore point function is off

TanyaC said:

There is some useful information over at Black Viper's Website is you want to tune it a bit more.

Click to expand...

There has to be a bunch of youngin's on these boards, because I can't imagine any other reason why so many people would still be recommending QuackViper's site. I'll develop arthritis typing in the reasons one more time....so let's just say avoid that site completely. I can't stress that enough.

As for "trimming the fat", before you take any steps, you need to find out what is using up the space you feel is "fat". WinDirStat will tell you this. Once you find that out, then you'll know how to proceed. Until then, we can only make random guesses.

As stated disabling hibernation helps a lot, Windows creates a hiberfil two times the size of installed RAM. It will also make a large Page File too and you can adjust that to a smaller size.
My full clean Ultimate 64 bit install, no programs, was 11.9 GB. The x64 version takes more space too.

EDIT:

Brink said:

By default in Windows 7, the size of the hidden protected OS hibernation file (C:\hiberfil.sys) will be the same as the amount of installed RAM on your computer.

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Microsoft recommend at least 20 GB for the 64-bit version of Windows 7 so I don't see that you've got too much of a problem really.

That said, Disk Cleanup, turning off Hibernation and deleting Windows.old (if you have it) will reclaim a fair bit of hard drive space.

You didn't give us your specs so we don't know how big your hard drive is, but say for argument's sake, it comes out at 500 GB, less than 5% allocated to the operating system is pretty good I would have thought.

About WinSXS... That is in fact the the OS. All of the core system files are stored there. That's where the actual DLLs and everything live which is why it's so big. And the 64 bit version is larger as it needs to have both 64 and 32 bit versions of a LOT of the files :/

DeaconFrost said:

There has to be a bunch of youngin's on these boards,

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Is 50 years old with 30 years in I.T. young? I like being called young (I sure don't feel it sometimes).

Sorry, off topic.

I've been tweaking my system with info from that site, and I really don't believe I've ever had any problems.

There's a very good reason he's called QuackViper. His "tweaks" do nothing, aside from setting your system up to be potentially unstable. If you feel you have no issue's consider yourself lucky...but you've gained nothing from his site. Not in performance or stability.

On several enthusiast forums, people were warned once, then banned if they suggested his site. Yes, it was that bad. He's mellowed out on his advice because of the backlash....but the point is still there that nothing can be gained from his site. It should be avoided, and you'd be helping people out by not suggesting it.

The mere suggestion of changing Windows services is proof positive he has no idea how the OS works, and is in no position to make recommendations. His credibility is completely gone. Not to sound like I'm putting you down, but if a person follows his advice...it's proof they don't understand Windows 7 enough to be attempting to tweak it, either. Windows 7 isn't Windows XP and shouldn't be treated like it. The best tweaking advice for Windows 7 is to leave it alone. If QuackViper bothered to learn about Windows 7, he'd realize how pointless his advice is.

I found this Cleanup Winsxs after Windows 7 SP1 install maybe this will help?

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I've been tweaking my system with info from that site, and I really don't believe I've ever had any problems.

Click to expand...

+1000

The Only problem I see, and it has nothing to do with BlackVipers site either, is too many Newbs without a clue are using these tweaks without any real knowledge about which services they are disabling, so they go and disable something that their apps may depend on, get a Problem? Re enable the service nothing more nothing less.

Warlockz said:

The Only problem I see, and it has nothing to do with BlackVipers site either, is too many Newbs without a clue are using these tweaks without any real knowledge about which services they are disabling, so they go and disable something that their apps may depend on, get a Problem? Re enable the service nothing more nothing less.

Click to expand...

I really can't believe this still needs to be discussed (but I guess I shouldn't complain...my rep soars each time I mention it). You are missing the very basis of the reason NOT to change services. Dependencies. It isn't always as easy as just re-enabling the service...because you likely don't know which one needs to be re-enabled. That's a level of troubleshooting that no one in their right mind would willingly take on.

On top of all of that, it boils down to basic common sense and rational thinking. If shutting off the "unneccesary" services yields absolutely nothing in return...no performance gain whatsoever....then why bother? No, that's not debatable...that's a proven fact, and has been for years. Why bother? That's the simple question. Why take risks with your stability for absolutely no return?

Common sense, plain and simple common sense. We're hear to help people get the most out of Windows 7...not increase their chances of instability.

If you read through his website...you are presented with one and only one question. What's the point? If there's nothing positive to be gained...what's the point? Would you willing bash your forehead into a brick wall? Nothing positive can happen...but would you still do it?

Dependencies. It isn't always as easy as just re-enabling the service...because you likely don't know which one needs to be re-enabled. That's a level of troubleshooting that no one in their right mind would willingly take on.

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Your reasons are null, I know what I am doing so I obviously don't need you to sit here and tell me I don't, but i will agree with "Newbs should not disable services they know nothing about".

You cannot tell me their is nothing to be gained by disabling certain services, this is what we call Hardening the OS, less vulnerable services, the more secure your OS can be, and yes I have many services Disabled that I do not need, why do you think I took the time to disable them? Because I don't need them, have a nice day!

You can sit on here all day and try to belittle people all you want, but in the end it is a personal preference which services they choose to use or not!

your reasons are null, I know what I am doing

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Then you shouldn't need me to tell you that you're wasting your time chasing non-existent performance gains. Glad we agree.

Glad we agree.

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Nope still dont agree!!!

who said anything about Performance gains? I hardened my OS for security reasons, But I also have NTFS Last access disabled, so everytime I access a file my HD is not writing unneeded crap to my HD, and yes this is a performance increase.

How to make a file read in Windows not become a write

A little known, and even less used, feature of all Windows versions from XP and forward is that they support a property called 'Last Access' on all files. On the surface, this seems neat, if not so useful. You can see whenever a file was last accessed using this property.

But think about it. What does this mean? It means that every time you open a file for reading, Windows needs to write something somewhere on the disk! If you're in the process of enumerating, lets say 500 000 files, this is equal to slow! Does anyone ever use that property? Not that I know of.

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Warlockz said:

I found this Cleanup Winsxs after Windows 7 SP1 install maybe this will help?

Click to expand...

This is the kind of stuff I was talking about. Thanks Warlockz. Mine is a SP1 build so I will try this (for I see little reason to go back to the original build and if so - screw it - I'll wipe the drive and install from scratch).

Didn't mean to start a pissing contest between you and Deacon - you both obviously know what you're doing and have strong opinions about how you go about doing it. So as a matter of respect, agree to disagree and drop the discussion. My feeling is that you can both learn something from each other on this subject.

Enlighten each other and see where that takes you for what you're doing know serves little purpose here.

The reason I started this thread is because I know MS and their penchant for expansion room as HD storage spaces swell - so have they. Sure some things need more code writing, better drivers and neater thrills. Don't use widgets and have turned off aero since day 2 - all for the sake of performance.

A little about me, I don't rely on the OS to woo me. That's what the programs I install are for. Wish MS would get that into their heads, but alas Win8 seems to have continued with their misguided tradition.

Why don't they just build a stripped down OS - like a NASCAR version. Sure the outer shell represents a road worthy production model vehicle - but this ain't your dad's Chevy or Ford. My prediction is I'm blowing smoke up my own ass on that pipe dream, brothers. :sarc:

Since my days with Win3.22, there has always been fat to trim off this OS and that's the reason I'm here chatting with you fine gentlemen (and ladies, though I have yet to come across one - screennames are so misleading).

With that said - anybody else have any other suggestions?

Performance-wise, I consider Win7 stripped-down compared to past Windows. It is featherlight and instantaneous with adequate hardware. What more can you ask if you're the consumer except possibly better hardware?

Black Viper was useful in XP and early Vista, until Win7 became the Black Viper by setting all Services not needed at boot to Manual on fast triggers.

I heard your question about editing the OS for size, and recall that when we were experimenting with that during early beta here and elsewhere, it was concluded that V-liting for performance was a waste of time strewn with unintended consequences. However editing for size on netbooks was considered useful.

So if someone can find one of those old threads (since I'm sitting in an MVP Summit seminar on Skydrive right now) you may have what you need. I'll look if no one else posts - I believe Jacee was involved back then.

This thread was started so I may free up storage space on a 120gB SSD. Noticed that my Windows folder was a whopping 21gB in size (over 15% of my drive). So I was wondering what the brains here at Sevens knew about it.

Thanks to Warlockz suggestion I freed up 3.2gB already.

As for performance - I'm up for tweaks to reduce extraneous crap running in the background - but short of rewriting my registry - I'll look at anything as long as there's now substantial trade-off somewhere in functionality or security.