Solved Wondering why my C:\Windows folder is so large

[linnymint]

Last night, just before bed time, my wife informed me that she had seen, earlier in the day, a message indicating low disk space on our Windows 7 (Home Premium) Laptop. I took a look at the properties on C drive and it was down to about a half GB free space. This was on an 80 GB partition on which Windows is located. I ran Disk Cleanup and there is still only a bit less than 3 GB free space. I took a quick look at the properties of each folder at the root of C drive and found that the C:\Windows folder occupied about 48 GB. Isn't this way too much? Could this be related to Windows 10 to which we never upgraded? I'll look a little further this weekend to see if I can locate the bulk of the files, but I'm guessing I'm going to have to remove some Windows Updates or something, and if so, I'll likely need a little coaching on that.

 

[samuria]

try UnCleaner - Josh Cell Softwares then run diskclean again and when its finished chose the extra option for system files it will scan again and find windows files

 

[ignatzatsonic]

TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

Download and run this free tool to find out exactly what is eating up space.

Might be System Restore points? You can adjust how much space it uses.

You can also adjust the size of your page file to save space-----or turn off hibernation if you don't use it.

Or could be a lot of things, but those are common culprits.

 

[linnymint]

I got a chance to check the sizes of the folders in the Windows folder and found a folder with about 16GB of log files. I did a search to see if these files were safe to delete and I was able to delete all but one which is about 1GB in size and I don't think it is supposed to be that big. I also tried UnCleaner (suggested by samuria, thanks samuria) and that got me back around 15GB more, about 4 to 5 of that in Windows folder. (I wonder if UnCleaner would have deleted the log files that I deleted myself). Anyway, I now have about 30GB free and the Windows folder is about 30GB. I just now Googled the system requirements for an installation of Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, and found that a full installation needs about 20GB of disk space (one web site stated 10-20GB), so 30GB just for the contents of the Windows folder and its sub-folders is still inflated by about 10 GB. I have yet to check out the System Restore points. I do use hibernation, but the hibernation file is not contained within the Windows folder - I don't know about the System Restore points. Any other ideas folks? Thanks in advance.

 

[Megahertz07]

Run Disk cleanup (%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe)

Disk Cleanup - Open and Use

Select all options on the Disk Cleanup Tab
On the More Options tab select Clean up on the System restore and shadow copies.
Run cleanup

Go to C:\Windows\temp and shift + del all files. Some of them Windows wont allow to delete as they are in use.
Go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download and shift + del all old files than current day.

 

[NoN]

try UnCleaner - Josh Cell Softwares then run diskclean again and when its finished chose the extra option for system files it will scan again and find windows files

Thanks!
Tested UnCleaner and it showed only 444,8Mb of files to clean....found it not so much Mb, i haven't clean install since a long time..

 

[Barman58]

I just now Googled the system requirements for an installation of Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, and found that a full installation needs about 20GB of disk space (one web site stated 10-20GB), so 30GB just for the contents of the Windows folder and its sub-folders is still inflated by about 10 GB.

The estimates for disk usage are based on Just the initial install of the OS, without any other programs from Microsoft or other parties If you consider that a program like Office or Photoshop can each take up in excess of 500MB you can see that the missing space is easily accounted for.

You have to take into account all the windows related folders rather than just the actual Windows folder, things like Program Files, Users and the hidden folders can easily fill an 80GB drive after a short time in use.

I recently re-installed my current system and after less than a week there is 60GB+ used of which the Windows directory is approximately 17GB, (no data is stored on the OS drive

I now use SSD exclusively for operating system disks and would not use one of less than 128GB and normally use 256GB to give some "breathing" Room".

You have to also consider that any move files operation requires over twice the space of the data involved and that a lot of update programs will also need a lot of room to work

 

[linnymint]

Haven't had a chance yet to act on the suggestions by Megahertz07*. But out of curiosity, I went to the folder Windows/Logs/CBS (this is where I manually deleted about 15GB of log files) and noted that there was a new file there. I ran UnCleaner and it removed the new file, so it appears that UnCleaner would have removed the 15GB of log files that I had manually deleted. I also noted that the remaining file (CBS.log) that had been about 1GB was now just a bit over one third that size - still too large.

*I have run Disk Cleanup more than once - it was the first thing I did, and at that time, it only retrieved about 1.5GB. I do not recall seeing an option to delete shadow files.

 

[MourningStar]

... and found that the C:\Windows folder occupied about 48 GB. Isn't this way too much?...

I'm curious too. what do you gurus say it should be?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

... and found that the C:\Windows folder occupied about 48 GB. Isn't this way too much?...

I'm curious too. what do you gurus say it should be?

Mine is 25.6 GB out of a total of 39.8 GB on C.

That's 64% of the total.

C:\Program Files x86 is 2.0 GB

C:\Program Files is .8 GB.

C:\Users is 3.7 GB.

 

[MourningStar]

... I went to the folder Windows/Logs/CBS (this is where I manually deleted about 15GB of log files) ...

the CBS folder on my machine is less than 70mb, fwiw

 

[linnymint]

I managed to get back nearly 3 more GB by removing Windows 10 update files using GWX Control Panel from Ultimate Outsider. I also used Never10, that didn't seem to do anything - probably because I had already used GWX. That gets my Windows folder down to just over 27GB. Don't know if I can do much better than that, so I'll mark this as solved. But I'll post if I can reduce the Windows folder some more.

To recap, I've pared down the Windows folder from 48GB to a little over 27GB using these tools:

Windows Disk Cleanup
UnCleaner*
CCleaner
GWX Control Panel

*This tool would have removed about 15GB of log files in Windows/Logs/CBS if I hadn't already manually deleted them.