29GB Windows folder, able to shrink?

wither 2 · 17 Nov 2018

Thanks. I never heard of Win Disc Clean Up. I've always used the Windows utility that I mentioned above. Doesn't require a command prompt and it works like a champ.

Ranger4 · 17 Nov 2018

Just one point to keep in mind with Disc Clean Up, is that it does not actually remove the cleaned up items until you reboot the computer & if there is a lot of junk to remove it will notify you with a message similar to what you get when the computer restarts after installing Windows Updates.

ProfPepper · 20 Nov 2018

Ranger4 said:

29 GB is certainly not a large Windows operating system. .

I think I need to stop being so meticulous about free space, just worried it will eat up my 60GB SSD eventually!

Anyway, thanks for the help. Just making sure there isn't anything else I can do

file3456 · 20 Nov 2018

My Windows folder.

It's those damn updates I told you about. I don't even use them, but you should at least install just the critical updates. The rest are just bloat and can and will muck your system up.

If you use a fairly decent anti-virus with Sandboxie for your browser, and scan all downloads at Virus Total, you're pretty much good to go. I don't even use an anti-virus on both my laptop and gaming desktop. Even if I do get some funny business I can always pull out my clone and clone back like hardly anything changed. I make a clone of both computers about once a month. So of course anything on the drive during that time frame would be lost. Except I do encrypt and use CloudBerry to upload certain important files to a private Amazon S3 account.

Ranger4 · 20 Nov 2018

ProfPepper. You could look at installing the free version of Ccleaner & run that occasionally. Otherwise be content with things as they are. Of course the drive will gradually fill up as you add data & new software, which is quite normal. It is also a very good policy to make regular image back ups of the Operating System drive, so in the event of a drive failure or a virus attack you have a fairly up to date image you can install, to get back into operation in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes or so.

I do an image back up once a week & on the few occasions I have had to use it, it has been a very quick operation.

A good free imaging system is Macrium Reflect & it can be downloaded from here:

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free