Trimming up space in Windows 7 all versions
If you are the lucky owner of a SSD, you know (at least at the time of writing of this post) that they are expensive. So many people only buy 64 or 128GB versions. So it is fair to say that every GB count.
However with Windows 7 (and Windows Vista, Windows server 2008 and Windows server 2008 R2) there is a new phaenomenon called WINSXS, located at c:\windows\winsxs (It’s is the Windows side by side) this folder can grow very big (eg. consume at lot of space)
So can you delete this folder, well the answer is absolutely not, because vital OS data is contained within, what can you do then. Well luckily enough MS have developed DISM a tool for managing disk images/OS images and with that some options to reclaim space from the WINSXS folder.
If you have installed Windows 7 SP1 or above, it is recommended that you have it running for a couple of days, just to make sure that everything is working as intended. Once satisfied you can go do the following.
Press the Windows orb and type CMD, right click CMD and choose run as Administrator, then type the following linie and press ENTER
dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded /hidesp
This will then free up all the space consumed by Windows Service packs etc. (On my PC it was nearly 5GB) the only downside to this solution is that you’ll no longer be able to uninstall SP from your PC.
Also worth mentioning is the use of disk cleanup utility which also can free up quite some space, by compressing older files, deleting temporary files etc.
Found by pressing the Windows ORB and type disk (then select Disk cleanup utility -Diskoprydning på dansk) and complete the process.
For Windows Vista SP2 your can’t use the solution mentioned above, instead you have to use this
Running this compeln.exe tool is pretty simple:
1. Click Start>All Programs>Accessories>Command Prompt or click Start>Run and type cmd to open CommandPrompt Windows
2. Execute the command “Compcln.exe”. The path is “c:\Windows\System32\compcln.exe”.
3. Users will be prompted a question whether to keep Vista SP2 permanently in the system.
4. Once users type “Y” and press enter, the system will start performing the windows components clean.
After the cleansing process, users will notice the free hard disk space has increased substantially.
This solution was borrowed from
http://www.mydigitallife.info/service-pack-cleanup-tool-in-vista-sp2-to-clean-up-old-rtm-sp1-backup-files/