Windows 7 Windows installer folder taking up 50+ gb of space - help!

[Slidemaster729]

Hello all,

I apologize in advance if this is an issue that has been covered, but I can't seem to get a straight answer anywhere about what the best way to handle my windows installer folder is. Currently the MSPs in the folder are taking up 55.8 gb of space from my modest 120 gb SSD. Obviously I'd like that room back if I can get it (Windows eating up 71 gb of space sounds very wrong), but I'm not sure of the best way to do that due to the fact that those files can be sensitive, and I don't want to do anything to harm the stability of my computer. What should I do to regain that space?

Thanks a lot for the great resource and all the help you provide!

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Well something isn't right, my Windows install takes 16 gigabytes.

You are saying Windows Installer folder, are you talking about the Windows Folder?

If so is this a new installation, has the operating system been reinstalled from a previous installation.
If so look for a folder named Windows.old or something like that. It's a backup of the old install.

Look in the Windows folder and right click on each folder and see if you can find out where all the extra space is being used.

If you have another computer handy, compare the space usage with that one.

What else do you have installed on the SSD drive?

Run CCleaner and see what it removes, maybe a huge number of temp files or something like that.

Download CCleaner 3.19.1721 - FileHippo.com

Mike

 

[Slidemaster729]

Apologies - I should have included more information.

This was a fresh install on a brand new SSD, so there is no old installation that might be crowding the drive. I did the install in January, and was very confused when gigabytes of storage just started to get taken up by mystery data. I finally did some google searching, and downloaded WinDirStat to see where all my space was going. What it shows is that over 55 gigabytes of data are currently being stored in the Windows Installer folder, and they all appear to be Windows installer patches (the files are .msp files. I assume that stands for "microsoft service patch"). This is a hidden folder that I could only find after running WinDirStat. I'm assuming these are updates that I've downloaded from Microsoft automatically, but there's no way it should be taking up this much space. The only other thing on the drive is a couple of games, totalling about 25 gbs, and some other trivial files (at least with regards to size).

 

[Slidemaster729]

Here is a screenshot of my WinDirStat breakdown. I hope this helps. It appears that all the extra space is in the Installer Folder, in the form of many many relatively small files.

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[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

It is apparently normal to have this folder, but I can't find one on my computer in either my Windows 7 or Windows 8 drive.
I turned off all the hidden options and they still don't show.

As far as I can tell the only option is to copy it someplace else and then delete it but that isn't without it's problems.

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My Windows 8 directory is only 100 Gigabytes and it shows about 64 Gigs used and that includes a substantial amount of software so I'm obviously not using 50 gigs for a Windows Installer folder. There is about 10 Gigs that I can't account for though.

Mike

 

[cliffordcooley]

I checked my folder, its only taking 1.4GB in space with 79 files.

 

[Slidemaster729]

Mine has 759 files. Surely that can't be right...right?

Is there any way to tell which ones I need and which ones I don't? How much space could I save if I simply compressed the folder? Would that be a safe option?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Primarily the Installer folder is only used during the installation of applications. And applications such as MS Office and MS Security Essentials links their icon image through the installer folder for some stupid reason.

I have in the past completely deleted the entire contents of the Installer folder. Be fore warned that some of my MS application icons were changed. The links to the apps and the apps themselves still worked but the icon images were defaulted to a windows icon.

If you do decide to delete the contents of the Installer folder then later find some issue, the application of which you are experiencing issues can be re-installed to correct the issue.

 

[whs]

My installer folder is only 2.3GBs and thereof the .msps are 409MB.

I would take an image of the C partition and then delete all those .msps. If anything goes wrong (which it should not), you can always restore the image and try something else.

 

[Slidemaster729]

How would I go about doing that safely? Also, is there a reason that this happened to begin with?

 

[whs]

How would I go about doing that safely? Also, is there a reason that this happened to begin with?

I cannot think of any good reason why that happens. But take an image of your C partition with free Macrium and then delete them in WinDirStat. Delete them to the recycle bin - then you can always recover them for a little while. And you still have the image once you deleted them from the recycle bin.

I myself have deleted the biggest .msp files from my system and nothing happens - the system runs as usual. As far as I know, the system will recreate those missing .msps in case it needs them again.

 

[Oscar Martinez]

Please help, pretty sure Windows shouldn't be taking up this much space on my drive.