See title.

MR - It doesn't really take up that much space.. My Windows 7 folder takes up about 8.4 GB. The Windows folder on my Vista drive, on the other hand, sucks up a whopping 14 GB even.It would seem to me that Vista's almost twice as big as Win 7...

MR - It doesn't really take up that much space.. My Windows 7 folder takes up about 8.4 GB. The Windows folder on my Vista drive, on the other hand, sucks up a whopping 14 GB even.It would seem to me that Vista's almost twice as big as Win 7...

My vista ultimate sp2 wimexpands to 8.7 gb. It seems to be the win sxs folder replaced the dllcache and takes up space.

My vista ultimate sp2 wimexpands to 8.7 gb. It seems to be the win sxs folder replaced the dllcache and takes up space.

Hi, I share the following information written by MVP Ronnie Vernon. Hope it helps. ================================================= 1. The WinSxS\Backup folder: In previous versions of Windows, such as XP there was a component called 'Windows File Protection' which was used to make sure that all of the many system files were protected and backed up. These files were backed up in the %systemroot%\System32\dllcache folder. If you had a problem and lost a system file or one of these files had been corrupted, you could run the 'sfc /scannow' command and the files would be replaced with the backed up copy in the dllcache folder. The dllcache folder was typically 500MB or larger. In Vista, 'Windows File Protection' has been replaced with 'Windows Resource Protection' which, essentially performs the same function. The 'dllcache' folder no longer exists in Vista, it has been replaced with the %systemroot%\Winsxs\Backup folder. This folder is NOT 'a backup of a backup', it exists only to make sure that files required for Vista to boot and operate are protected. 2. Manifests and Assemblies: Vista comes with a default selection of 'Shared' Manifests and Assemblies. This huge selection does not slow the system down or effect performance in any way, since the only time these components are actually loaded is when an installed program calls one of these components to be loaded. Developers may include a manifest in their program that calls one or more of these assemblies or they may install their own, private assembly in the WinSxS folder or in their own applications folders. When a program is started, if this program specifies an assembly dependency, side-by-side first searches for the assembly among the shared assemblies in the WinSxS folder. If the required assembly is not found, side-by-side then searches for a private assembly installed in a folder of the application's directory structure. Comments: 1. Duplicate files. Searching for and deleting duplicate files has always been something that Windows users have performed in an effort to reduce used hard drive space. However, this was done because hard drive space was very expensive and hard drives were very small. If this was 8 or10 years ago, this would still be a viable option, but it no longer applies since hard drives have become so large and very inexpensive. When Windows XP was first released, a typical hard drive cost around 2.99 USD per GB. Today, you can find a 500GB SATA 7200RPM hard drive for much less than 100 USD. The typical cost of hard drives is less than .15 Cents per Gigabyte. This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. 2. Deleting components from the WinSxS folder. As I explained, the shared and private assemblies, manifests, backed up system files, etc, are critical to the operation of Vista and all of the installed programs. If any of these shared assemblies are removed and you install a program that requires that assembly, the program will simply refuse to run, period. 3. Every system is different, when deleting components from the WinSxS folder, what works for one system, will not work for another system. Different systems, even if they have the same version of Vista installed, will typically have many different programs installed. A removed Side by Side component may not effect one system, but will effect another. 4. Changing permissions on or compressing the WinSxS folder can cause problems when installing an OS hotfix and installation/un-installation of any Win32 assemblies. References: Isolated Applications and Side-by-side Assemblies (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa375193(VS.85).aspx Assembly Searching Sequence (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374224.aspx Side-by-side Assemblies Reference (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa376414(VS.85).aspx About Isolated Applications and Side-by-side Assemblies (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374029(VS.85).aspx Protected Resource List (Windows): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382530(VS.85).aspx Cost of Hard Drive Space History: http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/winchest.html

MR - Actually the SxS folder isn't really that big - the files in there are Hard Links. The SxS folder is a cache of backed up components. Er.. Rather links to the files that make up those components..

MR - Actually the SxS folder isn't really that big - the files in there are Hard Links. The SxS folder is a cache of backed up components. Er.. Rather links to the files that make up those components..

Thank you that was very informative, but was it the regular or barbecue flaver potato chips?"This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. "

Thank you that was very informative, but was it the regular or barbecue flaver potato chips?"This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. "

MR - Got a 7-11 near you? They've got their own line these days - and you've got a choice of about 7 flavors. 79 cents a bag... Good stuff.. At any rate, we digress.. Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly...

MR - Got a 7-11 near you? They've got their own line these days - and you've got a choice of about 7 flavors. 79 cents a bag... Good stuff.. At any rate, we digress.. Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly...

As far as i can tell, it still has the scannow but it might not be as secure as with XP becouse the the only way to disable system file protection was to patch sfc_os.dll file and modify the registry but with the new systema file can easily be deleted just by taking ownership in unsafe mode.

As far as i can tell, it still has the scannow but it might not be as secure as with XP becouse the the only way to disable system file protection was to patch sfc_os.dll file and modify the registry but with the new systema file can easily be deleted just by taking ownership in unsafe mode.

MR Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly... Yeah. Hdd are getting cheap & for desktop no problem. Laptop do have problems. Most laptop manufacturers don't seem to know about this Winsxs issue in Vista. They follow the same partition rules as in WinXP - min space for C drive & bigger space for D & whatever. 20Gb in C drive is definitely enough for XP but for Vista after loading all the basic programs including Office 2007 occupy about 15Gb - Windows including Winsxs & System files used up 12Gb. In no time at all there's no space left to work on & for a lot of people there's nothing they can do about it. To increase the partition is no easy task as the Recovery disk is located in the other partition. Let's hope before Win7 comes out, the laptop people will take note of this & increase the C drive to at least 40Gb or more.Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU

MR Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly... Yeah. Hdd are getting cheap & for desktop no problem. Laptop do have problems. Most laptop manufacturers don't seem to know about this Winsxs issue in Vista. They follow the same partition rules as in WinXP - min space for C drive & bigger space for D & whatever. 20Gb in C drive is definitely enough for XP but for Vista after loading all the basic programs including Office 2007 occupy about 15Gb - Windows including Winsxs & System files used up 12Gb. In no time at all there's no space left to work on & for a lot of people there's nothing they can do about it. To increase the partition is no easy task as the Recovery disk is located in the other partition. Let's hope before Win7 comes out, the laptop people will take note of this & increase the C drive to at least 40Gb or more.Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU

MR Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly... Yeah. Hdd are getting cheap & for desktop no problem. Laptop do have problems. Most laptop manufacturers don't seem to know about this Winsxs issue in Vista. They follow the same partition rules as in WinXP - min space for C drive & bigger space for D & whatever. 20Gb in C drive is definitely enough for XP but for Vista after loading all the basic programs including Office 2007 occupy about 15Gb - Windows including Winsxs & System files used up 12Gb. In no time at all there's no space left to work on & for a lot of people there's nothing they can do about it. To increase the partition is no easy task as the Recovery disk is located in the other partition.Let's hope before Win7 comes out, the laptop people will take note of this & increase the C drive to at least 40Gb or more. Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU tonistein - Ah.. You must be referring to a Sony... Their drive partitioning drives me NUTS... 1.) They install a 40 GB HDD for the laptop, 2.) They create 2 partitions - C: and D: where C: is like 15 GB and the rest is drive D:3.) They don't do anything to redirect user files to be saved on drive D: - it's all on drive C:Next thing you know, you're running out of disk space even though you've got 25 GB of virgin, unusued space because mostusers just use the defaults - whereever the program saves it's stuff by default - most often some variation of the My Documents tree.

MR Ronnie's point is still valid - drive space is dirt cheap. Personally, I kinda think having that space being used is a better deal than NOT having it and being forced to reinstall everything because something took some files out. I can only hope it works better than it did under XP. Had a client who got infested with some virus or other abouta year ago that infected 5 key component files. Had to do some major surgery to bring the system back to life. Very ugly... Yeah. Hdd are getting cheap & for desktop no problem. Laptop do have problems. Most laptop manufacturers don't seem to know about this Winsxs issue in Vista. They follow the same partition rules as in WinXP - min space for C drive & bigger space for D & whatever. 20Gb in C drive is definitely enough for XP but for Vista after loading all the basic programs including Office 2007 occupy about 15Gb - Windows including Winsxs & System files used up 12Gb. In no time at all there's no space left to work on & for a lot of people there's nothing they can do about it. To increase the partition is no easy task as the Recovery disk is located in the other partition.Let's hope before Win7 comes out, the laptop people will take note of this & increase the C drive to at least 40Gb or more. Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU tonistein - Ah.. You must be referring to a Sony... Their drive partitioning drives me NUTS... 1.) They install a 40 GB HDD for the laptop, 2.) They create 2 partitions - C: and D: where C: is like 15 GB and the rest is drive D:3.) They don't do anything to redirect user files to be saved on drive D: - it's all on drive C:Next thing you know, you're running out of disk space even though you've got 25 GB of virgin, unusued space because mostusers just use the defaults - whereever the program saves it's stuff by default - most often some variation of the My Documents tree.

If it is taking up alot of space, you can set the limit of windows shadow storage space.

If it is taking up alot of space, you can set the limit of windows shadow storage space.

Frankly, has Microsoft ever thinks about those ordinary folks who knows nothing much about this Winsxs thingy especially when they had used WinXP before. I am a DIY guy who do setup of computers for my customers & also am a pro photographer & videographer & I consider myself as quite an expert in computers but I came across this Winsxs only 3 weeks ago & I have been using Vista Ult for 6 over months.Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU

Frankly, has Microsoft ever thinks about those ordinary folks who knows nothing much about this Winsxs thingy especially when they had used WinXP before. I am a DIY guy who do setup of computers for my customers & also am a pro photographer & videographer & I consider myself as quite an expert in computers but I came across this Winsxs only 3 weeks ago & I have been using Vista Ult for 6 over months.Gigabyte EP35 DS4 P4C2 6750/4Gb OCZ DDR2 1066/ NV 8800GT 256mb/ 2x1TB SATA running on WinXP/ 1x750Gb SATA running on Win7RC/ 1x500Gb SATA running on Vista Ult/ DVDRW x4 sets/ Pinnacle AVDV capture card/ OCZ ModXstream 700W PSU

The Winsxs folder replaced the dll cache. I examined mine and found that it has three or four backups of files when there need only be one which would cut it's size in two. Even though disk space is inexpensive I believe it should be usedto maximumefficiency.The less information stored on a disk the faster it can be accessed.

The Winsxs folder replaced the dll cache. I examined mine and found that it has three or four backups of files when there need only be one which would cut it's size in two. Even though disk space is inexpensive I believe it should be usedto maximumefficiency.The less information stored on a disk the faster it can be accessed.

Try storing your data in arabic numerals rather than roman numerals. That should help.

Try storing your data in arabic numerals rather than roman numerals. That should help.

This is what I think about win 7 - 64 bit. I am a professional graphic designer. I have run and operated many different systems in my 27 years of working as a graphic designer and in my opinion; win 7 - 64 bit is a pig. It uses tons of space that no one in Microsoft can seem to give a straight answer too, why they made it that way your guess is as good as mine.. the best answer they have is hard drives are cheap just buiy another HDD.. let me tell you a 60 gig SSD drive is not cheap in my book. At $180 a pop, unless your Bill Gates. I currently have a desk top Intel i7- 980 extreme, with 12 gigs of ram and a 2 gig GTX Nvida graphic card. Running windows 7 professional 64 bit I set it up to have a 55 gig corsair SSD 20x gig speed drive especially dedicated just for the OS. I have a 1TB HDD drive for my program’s such as Adobe creative suite CS4 & CS5 and my 3D animation programs. Like Daz and 3D max and poser I use for rendering movie animation, along with a few other programs.. I also have a 2 TB HDD drive for storage for my business & graphic design files etc. which I also had to use also now for my system back up. Because I had to disable the system restore in the OS because it was taking up to much space... which I feel is not a good thing to do but I had to have the space. I got this computer January 27 2011 to replace my XP pro 64 bit and as of today Feb 26 2011 My SSD drive is completely full.. Mind you I have nothing on it but OS system on it.. Now before I installed anything on my new system when I got it. I shut off the system restore and the hibernating features page-fiiling and indexing all the other features I would not use. I over clocked the system by 10% to give me a extra boost during long renders Now today feb 26 2011 windows went to update today and couldn’t because my SSD drive is completely full. GUESS WHAT? I don’t care. I refuse to let windows use any other of my other drives and I’m not buying anymore for the OS. Hard drives to me are not cheap, and plus I have 3 hard drive now so why do I need more just for a pig of an operating system which should only use a ¼ of the 55 gig drive its on now. I am very very disappointed with Windows 7 64 bit. And I will not recommend it to any of my clients. Because Microsoft doesn’t seem to really care about addressing issues with this fat pig of a system eating up a lot of space. In Double files and double file naming. Not to mention the x986) program file for win 32 programs. And a lot of software companies are not supporting win7 64 bit. . So I refuse to let windows use any of my other drive for their OS . I think 55 gig is way more than enough. So if any of you want a screaming machine at this point that you will need to buy hard drives about every month for to satisfy the operating system. I will gladly sell you my computer for $2800 that is $300 less than I paid for it to be built. so I can get a different machine and operating system

This is what I think about win 7 - 64 bit. I am a professional graphic designer. I have run and operated many different systems in my 27 years of working as a graphic designer and in my opinion; win 7 - 64 bit is a pig. It uses tons of space that no one in Microsoft can seem to give a straight answer too, why they made it that way your guess is as good as mine.. the best answer they have is hard drives are cheap just buiy another HDD.. let me tell you a 60 gig SSD drive is not cheap in my book. At $180 a pop, unless your Bill Gates. I currently have a desk top Intel i7- 980 extreme, with 12 gigs of ram and a 2 gig GTX Nvida graphic card. Running windows 7 professional 64 bit I set it up to have a 55 gig corsair SSD 20x gig speed drive especially dedicated just for the OS. I have a 1TB HDD drive for my program’s such as Adobe creative suite CS4 & CS5 and my 3D animation programs. Like Daz and 3D max and poser I use for rendering movie animation, along with a few other programs.. I also have a 2 TB HDD drive for storage for my business & graphic design files etc. which I also had to use also now for my system back up. Because I had to disable the system restore in the OS because it was taking up to much space... which I feel is not a good thing to do but I had to have the space. I got this computer January 27 2011 to replace my XP pro 64 bit and as of today Feb 26 2011 My SSD drive is completely full.. Mind you I have nothing on it but OS system on it.. Now before I installed anything on my new system when I got it. I shut off the system restore and the hibernating features page-fiiling and indexing all the other features I would not use. I over clocked the system by 10% to give me a extra boost during long renders Now today feb 26 2011 windows went to update today and couldn’t because my SSD drive is completely full. GUESS WHAT? I don’t care. I refuse to let windows use any other of my other drives and I’m not buying anymore for the OS. Hard drives to me are not cheap, and plus I have 3 hard drive now so why do I need more just for a pig of an operating system which should only use a ¼ of the 55 gig drive its on now. I am very very disappointed with Windows 7 64 bit. And I will not recommend it to any of my clients. Because Microsoft doesn’t seem to really care about addressing issues with this fat pig of a system eating up a lot of space. In Double files and double file naming. Not to mention the x986) program file for win 32 programs. And a lot of software companies are not supporting win7 64 bit. . So I refuse to let windows use any of my other drive for their OS . I think 55 gig is way more than enough. So if any of you want a screaming machine at this point that you will need to buy hard drives about every month for to satisfy the operating system. I will gladly sell you my computer for $2800 that is $300 less than I paid for it to be built. so I can get a different machine and operating system

This is what I think about win 7 - 64 bit. I am a professional graphic designer. I have run and operated many different systems in my 27 years of working as a graphic designer and in my opinion; win 7 - 64 bit is a pig. It uses tons of space that no one in Microsoft can seem to give a straight answer too, why they made it that way your guess is as good as mine.. the best answer they have is hard drives are cheap just buiy another HDD.. let me tell you a 60 gig SSD drive is not cheap in my book. At $180 a pop, unless your Bill Gates. I currently have a desk top Intel i7- 980 extreme, with 12 gigs of ram and a 2 gig GTX Nvida graphic card. Running windows 7 professional 64 bit I set it up to have a 55 gig corsair SSD 20x gig speed drive especially dedicated just for the OS. I have a 1TB HDD drive for my program’s such as Adobe creative suite CS4 & CS5 and my 3D animation programs. Like Daz and 3D max and poser I use for rendering movie animation, along with a few other programs.. I also have a 2 TB HDD drive for storage for my business & graphic design files etc. which I also had to use also now for my system back up. Because I had to disable the system restore in the OS because it was taking up to much space... which I feel is not a good thing to do but I had to have the space. I got this computer January 27 2011 to replace my XP pro 64 bit and as of today Feb 26 2011 My SSD drive is completely full.. Mind you I have nothing on it but OS system on it.. Now before I installed anything on my new system when I got it. I shut off the system restore and the hibernating features page-fiiling and indexing all the other features I would not use. I over clocked the system by 10% to give me a extra boost during long renders Now today feb 26 2011 windows went to update today and couldn’t because my SSD drive is completely full. GUESS WHAT? I don’t care. I refuse to let windows use any other of my other drives and I’m not buying anymore for the OS. Hard drives to me are not cheap, and plus I have 3 hard drive now so why do I need more just for a pig of an operating system which should only use a ¼ of the 55 gig drive its on now. I am very very disappointed with Windows 7 64 bit. And I will not recommend it to any of my clients. Because Microsoft doesn’t seem to really care about addressing issues with this fat pig of a system eating up a lot of space. In Double files and double file naming. Not to mention the x986) program file for win 32 programs. And a lot of software companies are not supporting win7 64 bit. . So I refuse to let windows use any of my other drive for their OS . I think 55 gig is way more than enough. So if any of you want a screaming machine at this point that you will need to buy hard drives about every month for to satisfy the operating system. I will gladly sell you my computer for $2800 that is $300 less than I paid for it to be built. so I can get a different machine and operating system

This is what I think about win 7 - 64 bit. I am a professional graphic designer. I have run and operated many different systems in my 27 years of working as a graphic designer and in my opinion; win 7 - 64 bit is a pig. It uses tons of space that no one in Microsoft can seem to give a straight answer too, why they made it that way your guess is as good as mine.. the best answer they have is hard drives are cheap just buiy another HDD.. let me tell you a 60 gig SSD drive is not cheap in my book. At $180 a pop, unless your Bill Gates. I currently have a desk top Intel i7- 980 extreme, with 12 gigs of ram and a 2 gig GTX Nvida graphic card. Running windows 7 professional 64 bit I set it up to have a 55 gig corsair SSD 20x gig speed drive especially dedicated just for the OS. I have a 1TB HDD drive for my program’s such as Adobe creative suite CS4 & CS5 and my 3D animation programs. Like Daz and 3D max and poser I use for rendering movie animation, along with a few other programs.. I also have a 2 TB HDD drive for storage for my business & graphic design files etc. which I also had to use also now for my system back up. Because I had to disable the system restore in the OS because it was taking up to much space... which I feel is not a good thing to do but I had to have the space. I got this computer January 27 2011 to replace my XP pro 64 bit and as of today Feb 26 2011 My SSD drive is completely full.. Mind you I have nothing on it but OS system on it.. Now before I installed anything on my new system when I got it. I shut off the system restore and the hibernating features page-fiiling and indexing all the other features I would not use. I over clocked the system by 10% to give me a extra boost during long renders Now today feb 26 2011 windows went to update today and couldn’t because my SSD drive is completely full. GUESS WHAT? I don’t care. I refuse to let windows use any other of my other drives and I’m not buying anymore for the OS. Hard drives to me are not cheap, and plus I have 3 hard drive now so why do I need more just for a pig of an operating system which should only use a ¼ of the 55 gig drive its on now. I am very very disappointed with Windows 7 64 bit. And I will not recommend it to any of my clients. Because Microsoft doesn’t seem to really care about addressing issues with this fat pig of a system eating up a lot of space. In Double files and double file naming. Not to mention the x986) program file for win 32 programs. And a lot of software companies are not supporting win7 64 bit. . So I refuse to let windows use any of my other drive for their OS . I think 55 gig is way more than enough. So if any of you want a screaming machine at this point that you will need to buy hard drives about every month for to satisfy the operating system. I will gladly sell you my computer for $2800 that is $300 less than I paid for it to be built. so I can get a different machine and operating system

to help you get a better feel for what is using what space on your hard drive, you might find the data provided by http://windirstat.info/ to be useful. The space you list is very, very, very unusual. One thing you can check, although I don't really think this causing your amazing space requirement, is to see how much space has been allocated for storing System Restore Points. WIN + Pause/Break key combo | System Protection (located in left-hand pane) | Configure button | adjust Max Usage slider to your preference | OK button I keep this number small, probably smaller than most. Mine is set at 1.5 GB. Most will set this at 5 or 10 GB. You can also right-click on the Recycle Bin icon, choose properties, and perhaps reduce the amount of space reserved for the recycle bin.

This is the listed things i did before I ever installed any programs on my new system. First I have been researching win7 before i bought it. So i knew going in i needed a dedicated hard drive for the os.. that wasn’t a problem. Then when i got the machine. I turned windows system store completely off. I am using mosey back up anyways.. But the point is it’s a feature that came with the OS that shouldn't have to be shut off to save room on the disk we as customers paid for this security for our systems and now we are told we have to shut it off to save space. That’s just BS .. All the other windows os systems never used this much space as win 7 does. Next I was not able to physically remove things i wouldn’t need from the OS like windows defender and speech recognition, dvd maker. etc.. When you shut them off, it does not give you space back, it just stops that part of the program from placing anymore data on the disk for the particular feature.( why did I pay for it then if I have to shut it off to save disk space) There should be an option to remove/ uninstall unwanted/used windows features programs not just shut them off, this would give some disk space back. But anyway the next thing i did was shut the hibernating off and the SuperFetch, and pagefiling. All useless with a SSD drive. Again no options from windows to uninstall these features, and again a service we paid for as a customer buying a MS product, But yet again we are told to shut it off. to save disk space .. Again I say that’s just BS. Needless to say the OS has completely use a 55 gig corsair SSD drive and all that is on it is the windows OS. To me that is not satisfactory. I am going to buy a new SSD drive and I am removing the ssd with win 7 on it because that all that on it and I am selling it to the highest bidder,. I have a win XP 64 I am going to load on a new ssd drive. And put into my new system. For now until I sell this machine and get a new G10 To me Windows 7 is a big fat hard drive hog. Which is poorly engineered because there is no way to clean it out without indirectly effecting something else in the OS.. I looked at a Mac 10 and yes they also have a bloated drive system but you have options to remove things you are not using.. they don't use a bloated file system like winsxs that over bloats the data system anf filles the hard drive up with double data files. and not give options, that is where there is no way to clean it, or uninstall windows features not needed. This is not my first computer I have been a Graphic Deisgner for over 25 years and used many operating systems. If this is the best Microsft can do then I can see them loosing a lot of business because of the failed OS Hard drive hog they have put out. this win 7 desktop does. This was not a cheap system. And I’m refuse to go out and buy a new hard drive every month so the OS can update.. screw that mess. The thing that gets me most is there are a lot of people out there looking to by computer that don't know how to manage them let alone how to run one., like some of us lucky ones can. those are the ones i feel bad for. If they buy a windows 7 product. because. in my opinion its using way more space than it should need. I mean really they can me OS systems for Mobil devices but they can’t build a Operating system that’s uses up a complete drive in less than 30 days.. Give me a break. The the ISP company I work for, is changing OS systems and they are not going with win 7 after what I have showed them. With this File bloating systems Good job Microsoft thanks for your support. PS: if you own any Microsoft sidewinder Gaming controllers.. They are not supported my Microsoft for windows 7 .. So you mise well throw that gear away if you own them and a windows 7 64 bit machine. Because they become usless for gamming in windows 7- 64 bit. And on there gaming web site they announced they have no plans on making drivers for theses game controllers and recommend buying new one.. again Good Microsoft at least your not using a gun to rob us consumers.

This is the listed things i did before I ever installed any programs on my new system. First I have been researching win7 before i bought it. So i knew going in i needed a dedicated hard drive for the os.. that wasn’t a problem. Then when i got the machine. I turned windows system store completely off. I am using mosey back up anyways.. But the point is it’s a feature that came with the OS that shouldn't have to be shut off to save room on the disk we as customers paid for this security for our systems and now we are told we have to shut it off to save space. That’s just BS .. All the other windows os systems never used this much space as win 7 does. Next I was not able to physically remove things i wouldn’t need from the OS like windows defender and speech recognition, dvd maker. etc.. When you shut them off, it does not give you space back, it just stops that part of the program from placing anymore data on the disk for the particular feature.( why did I pay for it then if I have to shut it off to save disk space) There should be an option to remove/ uninstall unwanted/used windows features programs not just shut them off, this would give some disk space back. But anyway the next thing i did was shut the hibernating off and the SuperFetch, and pagefiling. All useless with a SSD drive. Again no options from windows to uninstall these features, and again a service we paid for as a customer buying a MS product, But yet again we are told to shut it off. to save disk space .. Again I say that’s just BS. Needless to say the OS has completely use a 55 gig corsair SSD drive and all that is on it is the windows OS. To me that is not satisfactory. I am going to buy a new SSD drive and I am removing the ssd with win 7 on it because that all that on it and I am selling it to the highest bidder,. I have a win XP 64 I am going to load on a new ssd drive. And put into my new system. For now until I sell this machine and get a new G10 To me Windows 7 is a big fat hard drive hog. Which is poorly engineered because there is no way to clean it out without indirectly effecting something else in the OS.. I looked at a Mac 10 and yes they also have a bloated drive system but you have options to remove things you are not using.. they don't use a bloated file system like winsxs that over bloats the data system anf filles the hard drive up with double data files. and not give options, that is where there is no way to clean it, or uninstall windows features not needed. This is not my first computer I have been a Graphic Deisgner for over 25 years and used many operating systems. If this is the best Microsft can do then I can see them loosing a lot of business because of the failed OS Hard drive hog they have put out. this win 7 desktop does. This was not a cheap system. And I’m refuse to go out and buy a new hard drive every month so the OS can update.. screw that mess. The thing that gets me most is there are a lot of people out there looking to by computer that don't know how to manage them let alone how to run one., like some of us lucky ones can. those are the ones i feel bad for. If they buy a windows 7 product. because. in my opinion its using way more space than it should need. I mean really they can me OS systems for Mobil devices but they can’t build a Operating system that’s uses up a complete drive in less than 30 days.. Give me a break. The the ISP company I work for, is changing OS systems and they are not going with win 7 after what I have showed them. With this File bloating systems Good job Microsoft thanks for your support. PS: if you own any Microsoft sidewinder Gaming controllers.. They are not supported my Microsoft for windows 7 .. So you mise well throw that gear away if you own them and a windows 7 64 bit machine. Because they become usless for gamming in windows 7- 64 bit. And on there gaming web site they announced they have no plans on making drivers for theses game controllers and recommend buying new one.. again Good Microsoft at least your not using a gun to rob us consumers.

I've been working on computers since I was 11, so I have over 20 years experience fixing things like this, and cleaning machines so they run faster and more effecient, as well as 9 years of Military experience working on DoD computers. I've never had an issue like this at work, with any version of Windows, including Vista. Think about this: Total page file size is set at 1.5 times the amount of RAM you have installed. I have 16 GB on my machine. That means, of my 60 GB SDD, Windows allocates 24 GB to the page file. So, Ivy, you're using 12 GB of RAM? That means your page file is 18 GB. My Win7 x64 box was using 46.8 GB of space. I had less than 500 meg in my user folder, and about 1.5 GB of data in the program files and program files (x86) folders, respectively. I used WinDirStat to find out where I was using the most space. Not suprisingly, it was hiberfil.sys and the pagefile. I ran cmd.exe as an administrator and typed the following to turn off hibernation: powercfg.exe -h off I also turned off the page file, and rebooted. Windows now uses 18.7 GB of space. Remember, there are ramifications to turning off the pagefile, be sure to research that before you decide to do that.

I've been working on computers since I was 11, so I have over 20 years experience fixing things like this, and cleaning machines so they run faster and more effecient, as well as 9 years of Military experience working on DoD computers. I've never had an issue like this at work, with any version of Windows, including Vista. Think about this: Total page file size is set at 1.5 times the amount of RAM you have installed. I have 16 GB on my machine. That means, of my 60 GB SDD, Windows allocates 24 GB to the page file. So, Ivy, you're using 12 GB of RAM? That means your page file is 18 GB. My Win7 x64 box was using 46.8 GB of space. I had less than 500 meg in my user folder, and about 1.5 GB of data in the program files and program files (x86) folders, respectively. I used WinDirStat to find out where I was using the most space. Not suprisingly, it was hiberfil.sys and the pagefile. I ran cmd.exe as an administrator and typed the following to turn off hibernation: powercfg.exe -h off I also turned off the page file, and rebooted. Windows now uses 18.7 GB of space. Remember, there are ramifications to turning off the pagefile, be sure to research that before you decide to do that.

Okay maybe some background on the root of the problem would help. Windows XP (and Windows 2000) used a fast and great mechanism called Hotfix Installer (Update.exe) to install updates. Updates installed in very little time. If you wanted to further reduce update times on Windows XP, you could just temporarily stop the System Restore service and updates would install at crazy speeds. Note that this is not recommended for novice users who don't know advanced recovery methods, as some updates can sometimes cause your system to stop booting so you cannot even uninstall them. The method the Hotfix Installer used was simple, it just installed a new version of files to be updated at %windir%\system32 and %windir%\system32\dllcache (the Windows File Protection cache). For files that were in use, a restart copied them from dllcache to the system32 folder. This is simple file-based servicing. The hotfix installer (Update.exe) also supported various command line switches like /nobackup which means not to backup files it patches. Again, this is not recommended for novice users as some updates can screw your system even after the comprehensive testing Microsoft does before releasing them. But if you won't be uninstalling any updates (usually one only requires uninstalling updates if they cause problems), you could save a ton of disk space by not backing up the files it patched. The Hotfix Installer backed up files to C:\Windows\$Uninstall$KBxxxxxx folders so even if you did back up the files at install time, they could be safely deleted after a few days if no stability issues were found after using Windows with the newest updates applied. Update.exe also supported the very important and convenient ability to slipstream a service pack or update into the original Windows setup files using the /s switch. . When Microsoft was developing Windows Vista, they realized that components had gotten too many interdepencies on each other and to service each file reliably without breaking another component that relied on it, Microsoft introduced what they called as Component Based Servicing (CBS). You can read all about it in a much more technical way at The Servicing Guy's blog. What CBS does basically is it installs all files of the entire operating system, including all languages into C:\Windows\WinSxS and then it hard-links files from there to C:\Windows\system32. This has the benefit of not having to insert the OS disc to add or remove any components, and some other advantages as well like offline servicing of a Windows Vista or Windows 7 image. But the design introduces a major disadvantage of taking up a lot of hard disk space. Whenever an update is installed, it no longer installs it to C:\Windows\system32 and C:\Windows\system32\dllcache like Windows XP's hotfix installer (Update.exe) did. Instead, it updates the files in C:\Windows\WinSxS. Now, Windows keeps multiple copies of the same file but with different version in WinSxS if it is used by more than one Windows component. The higher the number of components, that many number of times the file exists in C:\Windows\WinSxS. When a Windows Vista update (.MSU) is installed, the components get updated, each and every one, instead of the files and the worst part is it still maintains the older superseded previous versions of components in WinSxS so the user would be able to uninstall updates. Microsoft does say that some sort of "scavenging" or deleting older copies of components takes place but is scarce on the details. The scavenging seems to take place automatically at certain intervals in Windows 7 but not in Windows Vista. In Windows Vista, you have to add or remove any Windows component for the scavenging to take place. And Microsoft says the scavenging will free up some disk space but in practice, on my system, I see my free disk space only decreasing on Vista as I remove or add any component. Windows does not give the user an option to not backup the earlier versions of components like Windows XP's /nobackup switch in Hotfix Installer did. As as you install more and more updates on your system, they will take more and more disk space. This is one of the primary reasons Windows Vista and Windows 7 are so bloated. Another reason for them being so bloated is the DriverStore that these OSes store. All drivers that are shipped with the OS and the OEM ones which you download and which are installed for a particular system are staged in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore. But let's not go there for now. . Now, an important thing to note is that the size of the WinSxS folder is not what Explorer or the dir command report, it is far less but is misreported by Explorer because it counts the hard links more than once when calculating size. That does not mean, the size of WinSxS is not causing real-world disk space problems on numerous Windows Vista/7 systems in use today. Microsoft's ingenious recommendation to this problem of ever growing disk consumption is to install fewer updates to keep the size of the servicing store under control. Of course, users cannot deny installing security updates and leave their system open to security holes. What they can do is install less optional updates, the ones that Microsoft releases on the fourth Tuesday of every month and also install less of the hotfixes that are available by request from a Knowledge Base article. In short, you have to trade the number of bugs fixed in the OS by installing hotfixes at the cost of enormous amounts of disk space. The whole servicing stack is a total downgrade to Windows XP's update.exe method. It causes heavy disk thrashing and slow logoffs/logons while Windows configures these updates at the Welcome Screen. Many systems are unable to boot because of failed updates. Another disadvantage of the "new" servicing stack (and the redesigned Setup mechanism of Windows Vista) is the inability to do a true slipstream of service packs and hotfixes. The time it takes to actually install these hotfixes online compared to Windows XP is also completely unacceptable. When you start installing an MSU update, it spends a lot of time determining whether the update applies to your system. Then, the update itself takes much longer to install compared to Windows XP's Update.exe (hours instead of minutes if you are installing dozens of updates through a script). Finally, that post-installation process ("Configuring updates... Do not turn off your computer") takes several minutes before shut down followed by a second post-installation process (configuration) upon restart before logon that also takes also several minutes and thrashes the disk. . I can install the entire SP3 for Windows XP in about 10 minutes after downloading the full installer. I can also install a slipstreamed-with-SP3 copy of Windows XP is about 45 minutes on a modern fast PC. In contrast, Windows Vista or Windows 7 do install relatively quickly (in just about 15-20 minutes) on a modern PC but installing the service packs and updates takes more time than anything on XP did. Not only can service packs not be slipstreamed, but Vista Service Packs are not even cumulative, which means if you clean install Windows Vista today, you have to install SP1 first which takes about 90 minutes, then SP2 which takes less time, then all the post-SP2 updates which do take hours to install. If you really HAVE to use Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you are stuck with this slow update non-sense as Microsoft does not even acknowledge that there is any slowdown or loss of functionality in the new servicing mechanism. The fact remains: MSU updates are slow as **** and take too much time and as Windows 7/Vista get older and Microsoft stops producing service packs, a clean install is going to take longer and longer to bring it up-to-date with all patches installed. Is is worth wasting your time on an OS whose servicing mechanism Microsoft completely screwed up? I once again recommend you read more about the servicing stack and how it operates at The Servicing Guy's blog:http://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/. To fix this messed up servicing stack, Microsoft also offers a tool called CheckSUR for your system if it finds inconsistencies in the servicing store. . Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows 7 products are not engineered with disk space in mind. It causes a problem, especially for SSDs which are still low capacity and very expensive. The only hope is that Microsoft again completely redesigns this servicing mechanism in a future Windows release so it would not cause this growing disk space consumption issue, speed up installation of updates by an order of magnitude, not slow down logon and logoff, not prevent systems becoming unusable because of failed updates being stuck at a particular stage and allow true slipstreaming. Microsoft's response to this is vague - they simply state "Windows 7's servicing is more reliable than Windows XP" but they cannot acknowledge it is a million times slower and still unreliable...slow to the point of being unusable and sometimes leaving systems in an unbootable damaged state. Of course they know all this too but can't admit it since it makes their latest OSes look poor. Moving from a very simple and fast update mechanism that worked to a complex one that requires endless configuring and repair through CheckSUR is a product engineering defect. Take a look at servicing-related complaints in Microsoft's own forums: 1. Very slow install of updates to Windows 7 2. Windows 7 - Updates are very slow 3. Windows 7 Ultimate, it takes long time configuring updates 4. "Preparing To Configure Windows. Please Do Not Turn Off Your Computer" 5. Very slow update install at shutdown (Windows 7 Home Premium) 6. Why does my computer run so slow when installing updates? 7. Every time the computer is shut down, it always says installing update do not turn off your computer 8. Computer is working slow and wants to do windows updates all the time 9. Windows 7 Update install time taking a very long time 10. Windows wants to install 6 updates every time I log off or put the computer in sleep mode 11. Problem In Configuring Windows Updates at the time of Startup 12. Computer really slow after latest updates 13. Windows hangs up in "configuring updates" 14. Why can't windows 7 install updates? 15. Every time computer is shut down, receive Installing updates, do not shut off.... 16. How long does it take for the Windows 7 Home Premium updates take? 17. Windows 7 "Installing Update 2 of 2" for 12 hours now 18. Updates causes endless reboots 19. Updates stuck installing for over 24 hrs. Computer does not boot 20. Cannot load Windows 7 after installing 2 critical updates A proper solution to this problem would be to completely re-engineer and rewrite the servicing mechanism so it operates with the speed, reliability and pain-free operation of the XP servicing mechanism. I don't see this situation improving in Windows 8 either. Good luck with your Windows tablet taking hours to install service packs and updates. Now, do iPads take that long to install updates? Microsoft understated the real system requirements to keep a Windows 7/Vista system running. System requirements at install time may be 15 GB of free disk space but over time, this number increases to alarming levels as you install more service packs and post SP-updates. You can find out the real size of the WinSxS folder using a tool like cttruesize (ctts.exe) (download it from http://www.heise.de/software/download/cttruesize/50272 and run ctts -la -a -l C:\Windows to find the correct size minus the hard links which MS says causes Explorer to misreport the WinSxS folder size but the fact remains that even with the correctly calculated size of WinSxS, the disk space requirements of Windows 7 to keep it updated are unacceptable, especially for people's SSDs which are running out of disk space!

Okay maybe some background on the root of the problem would help. Windows XP (and Windows 2000) used a fast and great mechanism called Hotfix Installer (Update.exe) to install updates. Updates installed in very little time. If you wanted to further reduce update times on Windows XP, you could just temporarily stop the System Restore service and updates would install at crazy speeds. Note that this is not recommended for novice users who don't know advanced recovery methods, as some updates can sometimes cause your system to stop booting so you cannot even uninstall them. The method the Hotfix Installer used was simple, it just installed a new version of files to be updated at %windir%\system32 and %windir%\system32\dllcache (the Windows File Protection cache). For files that were in use, a restart copied them from dllcache to the system32 folder. This is simple file-based servicing. The hotfix installer (Update.exe) also supported various command line switches like /nobackup which means not to backup files it patches. Again, this is not recommended for novice users as some updates can screw your system even after the comprehensive testing Microsoft does before releasing them. But if you won't be uninstalling any updates (usually one only requires uninstalling updates if they cause problems), you could save a ton of disk space by not backing up the files it patched. The Hotfix Installer backed up files to C:\Windows\$Uninstall$KBxxxxxx folders so even if you did back up the files at install time, they could be safely deleted after a few days if no stability issues were found after using Windows with the newest updates applied. Update.exe also supported the very important and convenient ability to slipstream a service pack or update into the original Windows setup files using the /s switch. . When Microsoft was developing Windows Vista, they realized that components had gotten too many interdepencies on each other and to service each file reliably without breaking another component that relied on it, Microsoft introduced what they called as Component Based Servicing (CBS). You can read all about it in a much more technical way at The Servicing Guy's blog. What CBS does basically is it installs all files of the entire operating system, including all languages into C:\Windows\WinSxS and then it hard-links files from there to C:\Windows\system32. This has the benefit of not having to insert the OS disc to add or remove any components, and some other advantages as well like offline servicing of a Windows Vista or Windows 7 image. But the design introduces a major disadvantage of taking up a lot of hard disk space. Whenever an update is installed, it no longer installs it to C:\Windows\system32 and C:\Windows\system32\dllcache like Windows XP's hotfix installer (Update.exe) did. Instead, it updates the files in C:\Windows\WinSxS. Now, Windows keeps multiple copies of the same file but with different version in WinSxS if it is used by more than one Windows component. The higher the number of components, that many number of times the file exists in C:\Windows\WinSxS. When a Windows Vista update (.MSU) is installed, the components get updated, each and every one, instead of the files and the worst part is it still maintains the older superseded previous versions of components in WinSxS so the user would be able to uninstall updates. Microsoft does say that some sort of "scavenging" or deleting older copies of components takes place but is scarce on the details. The scavenging seems to take place automatically at certain intervals in Windows 7 but not in Windows Vista. In Windows Vista, you have to add or remove any Windows component for the scavenging to take place. And Microsoft says the scavenging will free up some disk space but in practice, on my system, I see my free disk space only decreasing on Vista as I remove or add any component. Windows does not give the user an option to not backup the earlier versions of components like Windows XP's /nobackup switch in Hotfix Installer did. As as you install more and more updates on your system, they will take more and more disk space. This is one of the primary reasons Windows Vista and Windows 7 are so bloated. Another reason for them being so bloated is the DriverStore that these OSes store. All drivers that are shipped with the OS and the OEM ones which you download and which are installed for a particular system are staged in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore. But let's not go there for now. . Now, an important thing to note is that the size of the WinSxS folder is not what Explorer or the dir command report, it is far less but is misreported by Explorer because it counts the hard links more than once when calculating size. That does not mean, the size of WinSxS is not causing real-world disk space problems on numerous Windows Vista/7 systems in use today. Microsoft's ingenious recommendation to this problem of ever growing disk consumption is to install fewer updates to keep the size of the servicing store under control. Of course, users cannot deny installing security updates and leave their system open to security holes. What they can do is install less optional updates, the ones that Microsoft releases on the fourth Tuesday of every month and also install less of the hotfixes that are available by request from a Knowledge Base article. In short, you have to trade the number of bugs fixed in the OS by installing hotfixes at the cost of enormous amounts of disk space. The whole servicing stack is a total downgrade to Windows XP's update.exe method. It causes heavy disk thrashing and slow logoffs/logons while Windows configures these updates at the Welcome Screen. Many systems are unable to boot because of failed updates. Another disadvantage of the "new" servicing stack (and the redesigned Setup mechanism of Windows Vista) is the inability to do a true slipstream of service packs and hotfixes. The time it takes to actually install these hotfixes online compared to Windows XP is also completely unacceptable. When you start installing an MSU update, it spends a lot of time determining whether the update applies to your system. Then, the update itself takes much longer to install compared to Windows XP's Update.exe (hours instead of minutes if you are installing dozens of updates through a script). Finally, that post-installation process ("Configuring updates... Do not turn off your computer") takes several minutes before shut down followed by a second post-installation process (configuration) upon restart before logon that also takes also several minutes and thrashes the disk. . I can install the entire SP3 for Windows XP in about 10 minutes after downloading the full installer. I can also install a slipstreamed-with-SP3 copy of Windows XP is about 45 minutes on a modern fast PC. In contrast, Windows Vista or Windows 7 do install relatively quickly (in just about 15-20 minutes) on a modern PC but installing the service packs and updates takes more time than anything on XP did. Not only can service packs not be slipstreamed, but Vista Service Packs are not even cumulative, which means if you clean install Windows Vista today, you have to install SP1 first which takes about 90 minutes, then SP2 which takes less time, then all the post-SP2 updates which do take hours to install. If you really HAVE to use Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you are stuck with this slow update non-sense as Microsoft does not even acknowledge that there is any slowdown or loss of functionality in the new servicing mechanism. The fact remains: MSU updates are slow as **** and take too much time and as Windows 7/Vista get older and Microsoft stops producing service packs, a clean install is going to take longer and longer to bring it up-to-date with all patches installed. Is is worth wasting your time on an OS whose servicing mechanism Microsoft completely screwed up? I once again recommend you read more about the servicing stack and how it operates at The Servicing Guy's blog:http://blogs.technet.com/b/joscon/. To fix this messed up servicing stack, Microsoft also offers a tool called CheckSUR for your system if it finds inconsistencies in the servicing store. . Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows 7 products are not engineered with disk space in mind. It causes a problem, especially for SSDs which are still low capacity and very expensive. The only hope is that Microsoft again completely redesigns this servicing mechanism in a future Windows release so it would not cause this growing disk space consumption issue, speed up installation of updates by an order of magnitude, not slow down logon and logoff, not prevent systems becoming unusable because of failed updates being stuck at a particular stage and allow true slipstreaming. Microsoft's response to this is vague - they simply state "Windows 7's servicing is more reliable than Windows XP" but they cannot acknowledge it is a million times slower and still unreliable...slow to the point of being unusable and sometimes leaving systems in an unbootable damaged state. Of course they know all this too but can't admit it since it makes their latest OSes look poor. Moving from a very simple and fast update mechanism that worked to a complex one that requires endless configuring and repair through CheckSUR is a product engineering defect. Take a look at servicing-related complaints in Microsoft's own forums: 1. Very slow install of updates to Windows 7 2. Windows 7 - Updates are very slow 3. Windows 7 Ultimate, it takes long time configuring updates 4. "Preparing To Configure Windows. Please Do Not Turn Off Your Computer" 5. Very slow update install at shutdown (Windows 7 Home Premium) 6. Why does my computer run so slow when installing updates? 7. Every time the computer is shut down, it always says installing update do not turn off your computer 8. Computer is working slow and wants to do windows updates all the time 9. Windows 7 Update install time taking a very long time 10. Windows wants to install 6 updates every time I log off or put the computer in sleep mode 11. Problem In Configuring Windows Updates at the time of Startup 12. Computer really slow after latest updates 13. Windows hangs up in "configuring updates" 14. Why can't windows 7 install updates? 15. Every time computer is shut down, receive Installing updates, do not shut off.... 16. How long does it take for the Windows 7 Home Premium updates take? 17. Windows 7 "Installing Update 2 of 2" for 12 hours now 18. Updates causes endless reboots 19. Updates stuck installing for over 24 hrs. Computer does not boot 20. Cannot load Windows 7 after installing 2 critical updates A proper solution to this problem would be to completely re-engineer and rewrite the servicing mechanism so it operates with the speed, reliability and pain-free operation of the XP servicing mechanism. I don't see this situation improving in Windows 8 either. Good luck with your Windows tablet taking hours to install service packs and updates. Now, do iPads take that long to install updates? Microsoft understated the real system requirements to keep a Windows 7/Vista system running. System requirements at install time may be 15 GB of free disk space but over time, this number increases to alarming levels as you install more service packs and post SP-updates. You can find out the real size of the WinSxS folder using a tool like cttruesize (ctts.exe) (download it from http://www.heise.de/software/download/cttruesize/50272 and run ctts -la -a -l C:\Windows to find the correct size minus the hard links which MS says causes Explorer to misreport the WinSxS folder size but the fact remains that even with the correctly calculated size of WinSxS, the disk space requirements of Windows 7 to keep it updated are unacceptable, especially for people's SSDs which are running out of disk space!

Your one-man crusade against Component-Based updates is disingenuous at best - and confuses the issue. You would do far better to spend similar energy proposing improvements to a system that works well for the vast majority of people, and actually has less problems than its predecessor. The root cause of most update errors is not the way they are installed, but the health of the system itself, in respect of malware and related problems, and the use of ill-advised tools such as 'Registry Cleaners' or 'Optimisers' and 'Speed-up' tools. It's obvious you didn't even bother to read the post in its entirety and accusing of crusading! I did mention that a proper solution to this problem would be to completely re-engineer and rewrite the servicing mechanism so it operates with the speed, reliability and pain-free operation of the XP servicing mechanism. No one but Microsoft can fix it, now obviously after shipping the OS and signing it off as "successful", they will never care to fix it for Windows 7 or Vista. The OS is not working for a lot of people. Google for WinSxS Windows 7 site:microsoft.com and you will notice the endless sea of complaints. I am merely stating true facts that the servicing stack design is flawed which is why it consumes so much disk space and is so slow and I don't think that is confusing to anyone. The dozens of replies which merely state "WinSxS is important for the system, don't delete it" without providing any clue of the core problem which is flawed design are what confuse people. And why do you assume everyone has malware or uses registry cleaners? There are informed and sane people who also use Windows and know not to use these things but you can't fix something which is designed to consume more and more disk space over time by each update and service pack installed. By calling my explanation a "crusade" you are indirectly supporting the design and think it's appropriate, nothing's wrong with it.

Your one-man crusade against Component-Based updates is disingenuous at best - and confuses the issue. You would do far better to spend similar energy proposing improvements to a system that works well for the vast majority of people, and actually has less problems than its predecessor. The root cause of most update errors is not the way they are installed, but the health of the system itself, in respect of malware and related problems, and the use of ill-advised tools such as 'Registry Cleaners' or 'Optimisers' and 'Speed-up' tools. It's obvious you didn't even bother to read the post in its entirety and accusing of crusading! I did mention that a proper solution to this problem would be to completely re-engineer and rewrite the servicing mechanism so it operates with the speed, reliability and pain-free operation of the XP servicing mechanism. No one but Microsoft can fix it, now obviously after shipping the OS and signing it off as "successful", they will never care to fix it for Windows 7 or Vista. The OS is not working for a lot of people. Google for WinSxS Windows 7 site:microsoft.com and you will notice the endless sea of complaints. I am merely stating true facts that the servicing stack design is flawed which is why it consumes so much disk space and is so slow and I don't think that is confusing to anyone. The dozens of replies which merely state "WinSxS is important for the system, don't delete it" without providing any clue of the core problem which is flawed design are what confuse people. And why do you assume everyone has malware or uses registry cleaners? There are informed and sane people who also use Windows and know not to use these things but you can't fix something which is designed to consume more and more disk space over time by each update and service pack installed. By calling my explanation a "crusade" you are indirectly supporting the design and think it's appropriate, nothing's wrong with it.

The thing you don't seem to appreciate is that the CBS system updates are significantly faster, smaller, and more reliable than the XP updates were. They also require less in the way of reboots than did XP ones. Windows Vista and 7 are vastly different OS's to XP - you're trying to compare grapefruit and oranges, and ending up with ugly-fruits. Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

The thing you don't seem to appreciate is that the CBS system updates are significantly faster, smaller, and more reliable than the XP updates were. They also require less in the way of reboots than did XP ones. Windows Vista and 7 are vastly different OS's to XP - you're trying to compare grapefruit and oranges, and ending up with ugly-fruits. Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

The thing you don't seem to appreciate is that the CBS system updates are significantly faster, smaller, and more reliable than the XP updates were. They also require less in the way of reboots than did XP ones. Windows Vista and 7 are vastly different OS's to XP - you're trying to compare grapefruit and oranges, and ending up with ugly-fruits. My own experience for all my PCs and computers around me has been the opposite. CBS updates are dog slow, they take a hell lot of time compared to XP updates which installed in a snap. Even on patch Tuesday, my XP updates install in 5 minutes and CBS updates take several minutes to install. There is also the slowdown at logoff and next logon "Please wait while Windows configures"... crap. Do you know they removed the logon, logoff and exit sounds in Windows 8 to speed up logon and logoff. Why not redesign this horrible way of servicing and remove the delay that requires "configuring updates"? As for reducing reboots, nothing has changed. Most updates which require a restart on XP require one on 7/Vista too. Yes, the updates are considerably smaller - that is certainly an improvement. And reliable? NO!!! Nothing could be further from the truth. I see Vista/7 system everywhere where a failed update is stuck at the configuring updates screen..stage 3 of 3 or failure configuring updates screen and the PC refusing to go past the Welcome screen. In the end you have to boot to the Recovery environment and do DISM /revertpendingactions to restore the system. The CBS store also gets corrupt every once in a while and Microsoft then offers a bloated CheckSUR tool (several MBs) to fix the corruption of the CBS store. So the whole servicing mechanism is a massive downgrade in just about every way - speed/performance, reliability, disk space consumption and available switches to install. Only benefit is smaller size because update.exe doesn't have to be packaged with each update like it had to for XP. There is no reason why the two servicing technologies shouldn't be compared if the goal is to improve the system and not take a massive step like the updating stack did for Vista/7.

It's obvious that you are set in your ways and want the world to accommodate you. You are therefore bound to be disappointed - I suggest that you stick with XP, if you like its updates system so much. The fact is that v6 Windows is almost a different OS, and therefore requires different approaches to almost everything it does, from changing the system time to upgrading from Home to Pro, via WU. Firstly, .NET updates use Windows Installer on XP, it's not even a system component there, and for versions of .NET that are not part of Vista/7, there also MSI is used. They take just as much time on Vista/7 irrespective of the servicing method used and that's because the .NET runtime optimization service is compiling native images from assemblies in the .NET GAC. But this post is about Windows Updates. Secondly, this is a public internet discussion forum where people come to discuss and rant about issues. It looks like you cannot tolerate ANY criticism of your beloved OS and expect people to just sing praises of the product. I will choose what system to use of my own free will, no one's asking you. Kindly learn to ignore what you don't find rosy. I don't see any point in discuss further either. You can't convince someone who's blinded by love for the latest to see objectively and think rationally that newer doesn't always mean better for every change made. If no one complains about regressions and changes made for the worse, things will never get fixed. The original poster's question was "Why does Windows 7 take up so much space" and I replied to him. If you didn't like the answer, you don't have to pick up a fight.

I know I'm a little late to the conversation, but we're an MSP, so we have a lot of clients in a lot of different environments, and we have had several issues with SxS growing with relative abandon for disk space. I just wanted to lay my 2 cents in, because I've seen the amount of threads and complaint about the SxS system. I do get it's purpose, and who knows, maybe someday it will save me from a bad update, or help me when I need to roll back, but there's no reason an OS should be hanging onto 20 or more GB of files with no way of safely trimming the space, assuming you accept the risks of doing so. I think some tool or mechanism should have been included that could trim the space based on risk; SxS data that's saving for a rollback from an update that happened 2 years ago may not be so high risk to remove than the updates installed last week. Everything that's out there says to trim SxS at your own risk, and that terrible computer gremlins will come and eat your hard drive if you delete anything. I understand the function, but also understand the user's complaints that an OS should take 20-30 GB of a disk. As a SSD user, I concur with the complaints that many people have, primarily that there is not a tool that can be run to clean it up safely.

I know I'm a little late to the conversation, but we're an MSP, so we have a lot of clients in a lot of different environments, and we have had several issues with SxS growing with relative abandon for disk space. I just wanted to lay my 2 cents in, because I've seen the amount of threads and complaint about the SxS system. I do get it's purpose, and who knows, maybe someday it will save me from a bad update, or help me when I need to roll back, but there's no reason an OS should be hanging onto 20 or more GB of files with no way of safely trimming the space, assuming you accept the risks of doing so. I think some tool or mechanism should have been included that could trim the space based on risk; SxS data that's saving for a rollback from an update that happened 2 years ago may not be so high risk to remove than the updates installed last week. Everything that's out there says to trim SxS at your own risk, and that terrible computer gremlins will come and eat your hard drive if you delete anything. I understand the function, but also understand the user's complaints that an OS should take 20-30 GB of a disk. As a SSD user, I concur with the complaints that many people have, primarily that there is not a tool that can be run to clean it up safely.