Windows 7 - How do I slim down Windows 7?

Hi,

Using SSD. Installation takes up ~18.9GB - 3GB hibrsys - 4GB pagefile = 11.9GB - (Mediafeatures+XPSstuff+tablet stuff)

Is this all there is to it? There is 5.5GB Winsxs in C:\Windows. This folder seems to contain a lot of driver files that may not be necessary, shall I move it to external drive?

Thnx

Winsxs contains all files necessary for the compatibility mode and you shouldn't move it...

You should use CCleaner to clean unnecessary files

How big is the SSD?

I guess you could just go through the windows components in Add/Remove programs and see what you could live without.

Another thing you could try is TreeSizePro (the have a demo version) and it can tell you what is taking up the space (you can sort by size, show top 100 files, etc). Please note though, don't just start deleting things until you research what they are. It should give you an idea though on what is taking up the most space. I have a feeling though it will be mostly lots of little things.

you could turn off hibernation if you dont use it.

WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics
is a much better tool to use, and its free.

Although I'm sure this won't save you much space right now, turn off system restore too.

Hi, yeah, the major players are hibernation file and page file. I don't like NOT having the page file b/c it slows down the system shutdown time for some reason. But 4GB of RAM and an Intel 80GB SSD is what I have.

Yeah I wouldn't recommend disabling the pagefile either. However you can probably cut the size of it down to 1 or 2GB without issue.

Another place often overlooked is the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder. If you've downloaded and installed a lot of updates you can clean out that folder with no worries. I'm surprised CCleaner hasn't added that as an option yet.

I'm running an 80GB SSD drive in my desktop. Do you happen to have a second standard hard drive that you could use....for things like the page file and so forth.

Here is a link to a thread that I started on the WinSXS system. Don't worry, it isn't really using all the space "it seems" to be using:
WinSXS Folder not actually consuming lots of space

If you aren't going to use hibernation, you want to disable the hibernate feature to remove the hiberfil.sys file. (powercfg -h off).

On my 80GB drive (with 74 usable), I've got over 50GB free with all of my apps loaded,Win 7 Ultimate, Wolfenstein and Crysis installed. I've got a second 1TB Western Digital Caviar black that I use for file storage, page files, and my browser caches.

Disable hibernation,
Move pagefile to a normal hdd(other partition)
And delete the System restores via CCleaner(has a nice option to choose which restore's you want do delete)

And there you go! You get more space and more working hrs for your ssd!

My Install of Win 7 was around 7 GB, how is yours so much bigger?