Windows Vista Folder... HUGE!

I take it none of you have heard of vlite then? :p

Whats interesting is that while previous windows versions have only needed ~2.5x more rescources than their predecessors, vista needs 10x more ram, 10x more hdd space and 3.3x more processing power than xp!
 
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Oh yeh, Ive notice when you first install vista it slowly eats away at your hdd then after a week later or so it frees all the hdd up that its eaten up the past week.

Like when i first installed vista and got everything on my windows drive was at 22.1gb, and during the first week of using vist it slowly increased to 22.9gb. Then all of a sudden it dropped back down to 22.1gb. Anyone had this happen???
 
Energize said:
I take it none of you have heard of vlite then? :p

Whats interesting is that while previous windows versions have only needed ~2.5x more rescources than their predecessors, vista needs 10x more ram, 10x more hdd space and 3.3x more processing power than xp!
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It doesn't need that much more at all. On all the machines I have Vista on right now they have all had XP on it before. Vista performs just as well as XP did and if given the power it will make much better use of it. Vistas memory management alone is 100 times more efficient than XP.
 
"Need" is a bit harsh, as everyone correctly laid into Microsoft for suggesting that only 128mb RAM was needed. 512mb is too little in even the most tweaked of basic systems. Conversely, a basic laptop (x86 and without Aero enabled) worked better with half the 'requirements' than an XP install did on an identical laptop when I was testing it prior to SP1.

The whole argument of Vista needing a mammoth system is, in my opinion, a moot one, a myth, as it handles whatever resources it has much better than XP ever did. It just takes a bit of time to settle in.

Won't argue against the huge hard-drive requirements though, despite it being relatively less expensive than space was at this stage in XP's cycle.
 
15.8 gb with vista 64 home premium :O I should really do something bout it but it'll be a long time till my 160gb hard drive is filled.
 
You'll probably find most of the space is taken up in the winsxs folder I have over 9gb in there myself :eek:. Here's a quick quote I've copied and pasted as it's far easier than typing my understanding of it out, added to the fact that i'm just too lazy ;)

The Winsxs folder, stores multiple copies of dll's in order to let multiple applications run in Windows without any compatibility problem. If you browse inside, you will see what look like a lot of duplicate dlls, each having the same name. These are actually, different versions of the same files which are being stored; as different programs may require different versions. In short, Winsxs, which stands for 'Windows Side By Side', is Vista's native assembly cache. Libraries which are being by multiple applications are stored there. This feature was first introduced, in Windows ME and was considered as Microsoft's solution to the so-called 'dll hell' issues that plagued Windows 9x.
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In Vista, there isn't a 'dllcache' folder and nor can you find the 'i386' folder, where the system caches (like in XP) all it's source modules. It is this WinSxS folder which stores the shared components of side-by-side applications. These files can be multiple versions of the same assembly or application. Every side-by-side assembly has a unique identity. One of the attributes of the assembly identity is its version. "Side-by-side assemblies are used by the operating system as fundamental units of naming, binding, versioning, deployment, and configuration. The Winsxs folder includes all manifests, optional components and 3rd party Win32 files".
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But, why so many subfolders, and why keep so many different versions of the same dll, exe or other files ?
As mentioned, Windows stores the old dll's and library components in the WinSxS folder. Now if a newer version of this file is a part of the OS, but a particular application requires a particular older version for running, then the older version from the winsxs folder will be used, leaving the newer version in its present place, for other applications which may require it.

So obviously you cannot delete this directory, move it elsewhere. Nor is it advisable to delete anything here, as such a step could probably make your applications un-workable or even break your system! If you have many applications installed, you can expect to have a jumbo sized winsxs folder.

The safest way to clean it, is by simply uninstalling applications which you don't require. However, this too is not fool proof, as many applications still leave behind their files here, since they may be shared between other applications. So the probability of dud unused dll's being left behind is quite high.

And if you are into trying out new software or installing and uninstalling frequently, you may notice that your winsxs size is indeed large, as Vista will store multiple copies of these dll files, in order to let multiple applications without compatibility problem.
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5.7 :cool: i did my best trimming it down though because i was running out of room on my root partition :p drivestore will probably house GB's on data you just dont need at all, so thats a good place to start :) Not sure exactly where system restore is kept but i'd assume within this folder too, so turning that off (because lets face it, you wont use it) is a good idea, they're the biggest savers :) Probably half a gig for help files in languages you'll never use or whatever too...
 
LeperousDust said:
5.7 :cool: i did my best trimming it down though because i was running out of room on my root partition :p drivestore will probably house GB's on data you just dont need at all, so thats a good place to start :) Not sure exactly where system restore is kept but i'd assume within this folder too, so turning that off (because lets face it, you wont use it) is a good idea, they're the biggest savers :) Probably half a gig for help files in languages you'll never use or whatever too...
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I'm not so sure turning off system restore permanantly is such a great idea but you can certainly trim it down to a more reasonable level quite easily in Vista.

Open a command prompt in administrator mode,

Type in the following command into the prompt :-

vssadmin list shadowstorage

This will bring up how much space system restore is taking up.

To change the maximum size on the disk that System Restore uses type in the following :-

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=4GB

I've put in 4GB as an example but you can change that to whatever size you want.
 
Energize said:
Those are the official system requirements from microsoft.

Xp 300mhz, 128mb, 1.5gb
Vista 1ghz, 1024mb, 15gb
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They are the recommended not he minimum requirements. Even so I fail to see your point. At the end of the day Vista is a more modern operating system, so you would expect it to require more. It makes much better use of it though. As said, I've yet to find anything that XP does noticeably faster than Vista. Who in their right mind is going to want to run Vista on a system like that anyway?!

Below are the recommended requirements for Windows 95. The time frame between 95 and XP is similar to that between XP and Vista, so I feel this is a reasonably fair comparison. I'm sure you will agree the step up from this to XP is huge.

# A personal computer with a 486
# 8MB of memory
# At least 55MB of available hard disk space for installation
 
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