Windows 7: Disk Cleanup fails for small capacity hard drives

Ranger4 said:

You need to be very careful doing anything with the Windows Installer file. This MS website might help you understand it.

Can you safely delete files in the %windir%Installer directory? The Windows Servicing Guy

You mention that you now have about 18 GB free on the HDD. Have you considered downloading Macrium Reflect Free & either cloning or making an image of your existing HDD to a larger, say a 250 GB drive. You can download Macrium Reflect Free at this website.

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Pardon my ignorance, but how will creating an image of my drive help?

As seen on one of my replies, the main problem is that my Windows folder takes a huge amount of space (currently ~70GB), which I don't know how to free. I believe solving this would solve my problem.

Thanks a lot!

Snick said:

Usual recommend free space is approximately 20% of your Drive 125GB x 20% = 25GB

So I managed to free 23.8GB (Ccleaner and disabled memory paging (I will enable it again once I run disk cleanup successfully)) (see attached screenshot). However, disk cleanup still fails in the same manner.

I honestly don't know how to free more space assuming Windows folder is not touched. As you can see in the screenshot, it is huge (and honestly, even if I eventually free those ~8GB that I try using disk cleanup, it is still very big...)

Any more suggestions?

Ranger4 said:

I mentioned an image as they are generally considered a better alternative, but you do have to create & boot disc to get it to work if you are using a new HDD. It was only a suggestion for consideration.

Looking at the Tree formation in your Post #10 the Windows Installer files do occupy a very large space, but deleting it or trying to reduce it's size can result in Windows Update not working & many other functions in Windows failing & the only remedy might be a full reinstall of Windows.

If you were to clone to a larger HDD, you would have plenty of room to run Windows Disc Clean Up successfully.

I think I see your point, although I don't have any spare HDD that I could try this on and I would prefer not to buy a new HDD just for this purpose. I do appreciate the suggestion.

Snick said:

Do you have any programs you installed?
If so, you can do what I suggested in post #18
Reinstall them, to USB flash-drive.
Out of ideas at this point!

I don't believe I have any more programs to reinstall. The laptop is basically naked at this point...

Paul Black said:

Hi GuglyBu,

Just by chance, run CCleaner with the 2 attached files as per the checked boxes. The 2 attached files is what I have ticked on my old Vista machine but the principle is the same and I have never had a problem. Yours will be different but you get the idea.

Also, tick everything on the Applications tab. This shouldn't make much difference as you have uninstalled most programs.




I hope this helps!

Did that, went to free 24.6GB, still not enough
Will checking registry in Cclean help? I'm desperate at this point...

Seeing as how my installer folder is huge, I ran across this thread, which suggests some methods of reducing the size of installer folder. In particular, I've seen the PatchCleaner option and Compressing the folder option. Before I start doing stuff to my machine (and screwing it up), I wanted to consult you of how safe these options are (or any other option seen in this thread).

Thanks!