Windows 7 What ARE all these files on my system drive?

dkperez · May 15, 2010

My system drive is 63GB - yes GB... All that's on there is Windows 7 64-bit, and my applications. Data is elsewhere, cache files are elsewhere.....

At this moment there's 420KB free on the drive...

So, I started looking for what honking big bunch of garbage is eating this thing. Searching just for files larger than 10MB. There's most likely some other stuff going on, but the first thing I found was a LOT of files in a couple places... Can I delete any of these without causing problems?

c:\Windows\Installer\ has A LOT of files. With useful names like 68b8p.msp, which is 335MB by itself. There are 300 files in here, and it's taking better than 5GB... Anything in here I can delete? How about what's in the $PatchCache$ directory tree?

RAK · May 16, 2010

..Windows\Installer contains information after most of the software installations on your computer. This information is needed, in most cases, for uninstalling. You can delete the entire contents, but will run into difficulties when, and if, you need later to uninstall something. You may find you need to take ownership of the folder/Files first. Simplest way to do that is with the reg fix. This will give you a right click option to "Take Ownership" I have attached the file.
The hibernate file will expand to the amount of ram you have present. You cannot get rid of this, unless you turn off the hibernation feature. If you want to do this, it is quite simple. You can always turn it on again if you are unhappy with the situation.

To...

Agent Data · May 16, 2010

dkperez said:
...

My question was, and continues to be, not concerned about user files, application files, or any of that. It's just about what, if any, files and/or folders can be deleted from

windows/winxsx which is using just under 7GB
windows/installer which is using almost 5GB

..

do not touch these folders or any sub-folder in the Windows directory. If you wanna clean wipe do it by clean installing 7. Other than that use the Windows DiskCleanup tool to remove slack.

Athlonite · May 17, 2010

Interesting why do you only use 60GB of a 250GB HDD do you have multiple OS installations on the same HDD

as stated above you can delete everything in the windows\installer folder "but" when the time comes to uninstall something you may run into errors trying to do so

also for shits and giggles open up C:\users .>> find your name right click it and choose properties

mines 66.4 GB (71,382,899,455 bytes) at 16,068 Files, 1,651 Folders

RAK · May 17, 2010

And, for explanation, Winsxs contains all the files, etc, which handle compatibility. If you are running anything other than pure Windows 7 designed programs, you will encounter enormous problems if you delete any of the contents.
But even with your stated use of your PC, It surprises me that you are worrying about space with 6½ Tbs of Hard disk! But I guess none of my nosey business.

Lost me on this one:
"Windows may ONLY use 16GB total, but I've got four windows directories that
are using almost 20GB by THEMSELVES..... " A little of a contradiction in there?

Athlonite · May 17, 2010

alot of whats in my winsxs folder seems to be there for localization of either AMD64 drivers and system files or x86 system and driver file not much in the way of previous OS compatability stuff at all more along the lines of language dependent descriptions

like this taken from here C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_adp94xx.inf.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_en-us_7d4dd7ec25670124\adp94xx.inf_loc

the first line states this

[Strings.0409]<< US English hardware ID
;localizable
INF_PROVIDER = "Adaptec"
ADP = "Adaptec"

Windows 7 What ARE all these files on my system drive?

dkperez

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