reduce size of Windows folder?

redux

I was reading a newsletter this morning in which the editor had installed XP on a new Eee PC. It set me thinking ...

I wonder how big the installation turns out to be. On this old desktop, the Windows (XP Pro SP2, full updates) folder has grown to about 4 GB, though I'm sure it could be thinned out a lot: Driver Cache seems to hold a load of old printer definitions for example. And all the updates must take up space too, though here I suppose I could delete the uninstall backup folders for SP2 and so on. The $hf_mig$ folder is about 500 MB and I don't know enough about what it is, but also something to do with co-ordinating updates I think ...

So I'm asking: what is a typical XP new installation size, and can people please comment on this or point to articles and websites that will help educate about what can be stripped out of both new and old XP installations?

I'm almost hoping there will soon be an SP3, as presumably this would presumably mean most of the space taken up by updates could be recovered ...

amonra

Be very careful about stripping out MS files you THINK might be of no use as there are some empty files that MS think are essential and crash the system if removed. Obviously there are a load of drivers and misc. sound files that could be removed, but it's hardly worth the risk of making your system unbootable.
MS has always been know for bloatware, as demonstrated by each successive release, ie. Win 3.1 Win 95 XP etc etc. Each new issue demands more and more GBs, and so it will continue I'm afraid. Keep taking the tablets...............

Chippy_Minton

4 GB is relatively small for the C:\Windows folder; on 2 of my machines it's 6 and 8.5 GB. In these days of large hard drives there really is no need to be deleting Windows files directly. If you want to reclaim a bit of space, a safe way of doing it is via Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs - Add/Remove Windows Components and also uninstalling unused programs which might have a few files in C:\Windows, though this will only get you a few MB so it's hardly worth doing.

ormus

mine is just 2.5gb
but its a fairly new install. and i make sure that almost all data and progs are stored elsewhere.

isofa

Mine is 5Gb, and it's been running since installed in 2002, will all the updates - so I guess that's not too bad, despite the system taking an age to boot and shutdown nowadays.

I guess you could use the "Disk Cleanup" Wizard to suggest files that can be trashed (right-click the C drive to find the option), but I'm not sure if it affects bloat in the Windows folder, or anything worth removing.

SP3 is definitely on it's way, hopefully released in the Spring next year, the official schedule is "first half of 2008".

Conor_3

www.xplite.net has an application you can use to uninstall all kinds of stuff such as the ATI drivers, modem drivers, accesibility options etc etc etc.

Anyway, why are you worrying? A large Windows folder won't slow the system down and with 1000GB Hdds around £100, storage is cheap.

The only reason it's of interest to things like the Eee PC is the limited storage they have.