Ok, so it's been a year since I had this issue... (See link to previous thread in this Forum: http://http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f217/help-vista-updates-have-eaten-all-the-laptop-disk-space-help-625379.html
(In short, Vista Windows Updates had eaten up my 37.1 GB disk space on my Toshiba Vista Laptop, 1014MB Memory (RAM), 32-bit Operating System, whittling it down to just around 1GB).
I didn't really get anywhere in understanding where all that space had gone...kind of got fed up with it and just removed some more of my files and worked mostly using/saving to USB. Had to cope with Vista showing just 2 or 3 GB free out of 37.1 GB.
Now (this week) I decided to try to sort it out again and ran TreeSize. Thanks so much for this suggestion in previous thread! Now I know which folder is being greedy and using all the space...! Basically, TreeSize shows:
35.5GB C:\ ON [Vista]:
20.0 GB Windows;
7.7 GB Users
4.2 GB Program Files
2.3 GB 11 Files
0.9 GB ProgramData
0.3 GB MSOCache
0.1 GB Toshiba
0.0 GB perflogs
0.0 GB Boot
0.0 GB System Volume Information
0.0 GB Intel
0.0 GB $Recycle Bin
0.0 GB temp
0.0 GB Documents and Settings
0.0 GB logs
So the culprit out of the above is the whopping 20.0 GB WINDOWS Folder! (It can’t be me then, can it lol…). So I went looking inside this whopping big folder and found a sub-folder taking up around 10GB (!) see list of sub-folders in that Windows Folder below:
10.7 GB winsxs
3.5 GB System32
2.0GB Installer
1.5GB Software Distribution
0.6 GB assembly
0.3 GB Fonts
0.2 GB [63 Files]
0.2 GB Speech
0.1 GB eHome
0.1 GB IME
0.1 GB Microsoft.NET
0.1 GB logs
0.1 GB Help
0.1 GB inf
And a large list of others all 0.0 GB (so I didn’t type them all out here).
So in the break-down of all the sub-folders that contribute to that original whopping 20.0GB Windows Folder, I find the WINSXS folder to be the greedy culprit, gobbling up 10.7 GB!
I don't know much about what this WINSXS folder is except that it sort of creates multiple versions of a DLL (?) whatever that means...? So it has different versions of the same thing?
I tried researching a bit on it but I'm afraid I didn't understand much. Apparently, according to Microsoft, this folder is used during 'service installations' including 'updates', service packs, hotfixes, etc.
It's not these service packs (Sp1 & SP2)that were causing the issue in the first place though as I only installed them a few days ago - see the 'more info' bit at end. My problems go back to those original pesky windows updates as I wrote before in the previous thread.
In the WINSXS folder, there are other folders, e.g.:
0.4 GB Backup
0.3 GB ManifestCache
0.3 GB Manifests
0.3 GB x86_microsoft-windows-naturallanguage (with a string of letters and numbers that I didn’t type here. Also this same name is repeated for around six other folders under it but with different string of letters and numbers after each; all are 0.3GB).
Then there is 0.2 GB Temp;
And a few other folders, about six, of 0.1 GB each
And then there are lots and lots and lots of folders in a massive long list all 0.0 GB!! So I don’t understand it at all. Some are multiples of the same name.
More info: I recently downloaded and installed successfully both SP1 and SP2 for Vista. I have today reclaimed the small space used by these installations by making them permanent by running Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Compcln.exe. (I couldn’t locate the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 reclaiming disk space thingy: VSP1CLN.EXE in the system so presumably it was integrated into the SP2 removal Compcln…? Anyway, after I ran it today, it gave me back about 1 or 2 GB that it had taken during installation. So that only made a very small, insignificant difference overall as TreeSize showed me today when I ran it again: winsxs is now 8 GB instead of 10 GB).
:volts: Anyway, I guess I’m bamboozled: How can I reduce the file size of this winsxs folder safely?
:question:
What can I do about this entire Windows 20.0GB folder gobble gobble problem?
Can anyone help?
(In short, Vista Windows Updates had eaten up my 37.1 GB disk space on my Toshiba Vista Laptop, 1014MB Memory (RAM), 32-bit Operating System, whittling it down to just around 1GB).
I didn't really get anywhere in understanding where all that space had gone...kind of got fed up with it and just removed some more of my files and worked mostly using/saving to USB. Had to cope with Vista showing just 2 or 3 GB free out of 37.1 GB.
Now (this week) I decided to try to sort it out again and ran TreeSize. Thanks so much for this suggestion in previous thread! Now I know which folder is being greedy and using all the space...! Basically, TreeSize shows:
35.5GB C:\ ON [Vista]:
20.0 GB Windows;
7.7 GB Users
4.2 GB Program Files
2.3 GB 11 Files
0.9 GB ProgramData
0.3 GB MSOCache
0.1 GB Toshiba
0.0 GB perflogs
0.0 GB Boot
0.0 GB System Volume Information
0.0 GB Intel
0.0 GB $Recycle Bin
0.0 GB temp
0.0 GB Documents and Settings
0.0 GB logs
So the culprit out of the above is the whopping 20.0 GB WINDOWS Folder! (It can’t be me then, can it lol…). So I went looking inside this whopping big folder and found a sub-folder taking up around 10GB (!) see list of sub-folders in that Windows Folder below:
10.7 GB winsxs
3.5 GB System32
2.0GB Installer
1.5GB Software Distribution
0.6 GB assembly
0.3 GB Fonts
0.2 GB [63 Files]
0.2 GB Speech
0.1 GB eHome
0.1 GB IME
0.1 GB Microsoft.NET
0.1 GB logs
0.1 GB Help
0.1 GB inf
And a large list of others all 0.0 GB (so I didn’t type them all out here).
So in the break-down of all the sub-folders that contribute to that original whopping 20.0GB Windows Folder, I find the WINSXS folder to be the greedy culprit, gobbling up 10.7 GB!
I don't know much about what this WINSXS folder is except that it sort of creates multiple versions of a DLL (?) whatever that means...? So it has different versions of the same thing?
I tried researching a bit on it but I'm afraid I didn't understand much. Apparently, according to Microsoft, this folder is used during 'service installations' including 'updates', service packs, hotfixes, etc.
It's not these service packs (Sp1 & SP2)that were causing the issue in the first place though as I only installed them a few days ago - see the 'more info' bit at end. My problems go back to those original pesky windows updates as I wrote before in the previous thread.
In the WINSXS folder, there are other folders, e.g.:
0.4 GB Backup
0.3 GB ManifestCache
0.3 GB Manifests
0.3 GB x86_microsoft-windows-naturallanguage (with a string of letters and numbers that I didn’t type here. Also this same name is repeated for around six other folders under it but with different string of letters and numbers after each; all are 0.3GB).
Then there is 0.2 GB Temp;
And a few other folders, about six, of 0.1 GB each
And then there are lots and lots and lots of folders in a massive long list all 0.0 GB!! So I don’t understand it at all. Some are multiples of the same name.
More info: I recently downloaded and installed successfully both SP1 and SP2 for Vista. I have today reclaimed the small space used by these installations by making them permanent by running Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Compcln.exe. (I couldn’t locate the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 reclaiming disk space thingy: VSP1CLN.EXE in the system so presumably it was integrated into the SP2 removal Compcln…? Anyway, after I ran it today, it gave me back about 1 or 2 GB that it had taken during installation. So that only made a very small, insignificant difference overall as TreeSize showed me today when I ran it again: winsxs is now 8 GB instead of 10 GB).
:volts: Anyway, I guess I’m bamboozled: How can I reduce the file size of this winsxs folder safely?
:question:
What can I do about this entire Windows 20.0GB folder gobble gobble problem?
Can anyone help?