Windows 7 getting fat

[AdeonC]

Guys, I need some help here.
I have a partition only for the operational system. Now it's almost full, and I've just noticed that win 7 folder has 17gb! What's that about, temporary files? Is there any way to clean something that's consuming my harddrive in its folder?

Thanks.

 

[holo88]

more than possible that your System Restore check points are the culprits. in disk clean up, hit "Clean up system files" (or similar) and then clean up restore points.

hope it helps.

 

[AdeonC]

more than possible that your System Restore check points are the culprits. in disk clean up, hit "Clean up system files" (or similar) and then clean up restore points.

hope it helps.

I tried deleting these checkpoints but it didn't help. Windows folder still contains 17gb and increasing

Thanks

 

[7Dreams]

clean install again.

 

[holo88]

hmm...

did you do an upgrade installation? if that is the case there will be a folder called windows.old. and that, depending on your previous OS, could account for the extra 8+ gigabytes.

 

[Orbital Shark]

It could be Updates (and backups of those) that are now taking up valuable space.

You may also want to check what is in C:\Windows\Temp folder and see if you can clear ALL that is in there.

 

[Orbital Shark]

hmm...

did you do an upgrade installation? if that is the case there will be a folder called windows.old. and that, depending on your previous OS, could account for the extra 8+ gigabytes.

But it's not (or shouldn't be) stored within the Windows folder, it's a folder on it's own in the ROOT directory

 

[AdeonC]

hmm...

did you do an upgrade installation? if that is the case there will be a folder called windows.old. and that, depending on your previous OS, could account for the extra 8+ gigabytes.

I didn't, there's no windows.old folder. In my situation, I'd have deleted this already by now

It could be Updates (and backups of those) that are now taking up valuable space.

You may also want to check what is in C:\Windows\Temp folder and see if you can clear ALL that is in there.

This Temp folder contains 1.28gb... is it safe just to delete everything?
Sure this folder does contain quite large data, but it's not really the focus of the problem
winsxs folder has 5.61gb :shock:

clean install again.

That's something that I'm avoiding to do since I don't believe the only solution is reinstalling the OS.

Thanks to everyone.

 

[logicearth]

You should know the Windows folder is shown as double in size then what it really is. This is because most of the files in there are nothing more then hardlinks to locations inside WinSxS. Hardlinks are counted in terms of filesize, every file that has a hardlink ref-point is counted twice or more.

In the screenshot below all the tiny red arrows in the bottom left corner are hardlinks. Enabled from "LinkShellExtension". Almost everything in System32 is a hardlink, only a few files are not.

 

[Orbital Shark]

It's completely safe to clean out the temp folder within the Windows folder

 

[rangerevo8]

will it be the shadow copy?
i rmbr it wont be deleted even u turned off it..
last time i needed to delete it manually using cmd

 

[AlexRD]

Try deleting all restore points:

Start > Right Click my Computer and go to properties > System Protection( On the BAR < ) > Configure > Delete

 

[Crypto]

Just a thought, may be a virus is creating folders repeatedly.

 

[swarfega]

also consider running ccleaner.

 

[Orbital Shark]

also consider running ccleaner.

+1 cCleaner is a fantastic tool. That is, if you DON'T use the registry cleaner bit

 

[sevsman]

Give this a try pal

http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_disk_analyzer

I use it to find any specific space hogs and i have found it very helpfull in the past. I know that you know which folder is huge but this will automatically find any big hidded files

 

[logicearth]

Give this a try pal

http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_disk_analyzer

I use it to find any specific space hogs and i have found it very helpfull in the past. I know that you know which folder is huge but this will automatically find any big hidded files

Which also counts hardlinks multiple times, while technically it should, the results are not accurate. The Hardlinks also extend into Program Files as well.

 

[sergiogarcia9]

Mine is only 8,84 but with all the apps it's fat

 

[sevsman]

It may well count hard links, but that doesn't matter if it's a big file and not just lots of little files that he's looking to find.

 

[Dinesh]

Try disk clean up.