Windows Folder 20gb
Jule Kue
A large Windows folder is quite normal. The Windows folder may start out in the 6-8GB range bbut it will grow larger over time. This is normal behavior of Vista/7 and there isn't really much you can do about it.
Another folder that can grow big is the Windows\Installer folder, a protected system folder that contains repair and uninstall information for the programs and updates you've installed. There used to be a program by Microsoft called miszap.exe that could clean out orphaned files from here, but there were issues and it is no longer supported.
The fact is that there really is no safe way to clean out stuff from the Windows folder beyond what Disk Cleanup can do. It is also quite normal for the Windows folder to grow over time as updates and programs get installed onto the system.
The one way to get the Windows folder back to a smaller size is to wipe the system and clean-install it from scratch. But even this is a temporary fix as the Windows folder will start to grow again over time.
In my case, the C:\Windows directory was 272 GB! I saw other people mentioned the Installer folder but mine was a measly 18 GB, and another possibility, the winsxs folder, was just a paltry 16 GB. For me the culprit was the C:\Windows\Temp folder which weighed in at 206 GB! Fortunately, the heavyweight Temp folder had a weak chin, and I knocked it out with a single sucker punch which surprisingly took less than 30 seconds. When the bout was over all that remained were 17 small locked files that I left for the birds to eat.
Tip: I didn't delete the Temp folder; I just opened it, reverse sorted by file size, and selected everything in it, and deleted that. Some of the small files at the end were locked and I left them.
You first select the elements you want to measure, this by using "Ctrl" key and click over the files or folders without releasing the key. As a second step you click the right button of your mouse and select "Properties" option displayed in the menu.
And what is the trick? Well, it's quite simple but I know there are people who may not have acknowledge about this, just use the keys "Alt" and "Enter" and you'll skip the right-clicking thing and selecting "Properties". Yes! just select the elements and press "Alt" + "Enter" to go straight to "Properties" windows.
I recently discovered that the Settings app is showing around 20GB of space used by temporary files. But when I go to remove them I can only remove about 28MB. When I open the temp folder by using Run and then %temp% it only shows around 40-50MB of files right after boot. How can I remove these 20GB of invisible files? I only have a 240GB SSD so space is quite scarce. Here are a few photos:
UPDATE: After turning on hidden items I found a folder name WINDOWS-BT, after doing some research it turned out to be a folder for the previous windows version. I deleted it using TakeOwnerShip pro and this removed around 12GB of temporary files, but 8GB still remain. I am currently downloading TreeSize free to find out where the other 8GB is.
UPDATE 2: Hi, I downloaded TreeSizeFree and I didn't really find anything there. The biggest folder is 87GB of Program Files which mainly consists of my GTA V install. The Program Files (x86) folder was mainly made up of my Steam games (CS:GO, Besiege, etc). The 5.5GB [3 Files] location was noted as being my pagefile.
FINAL UPDATE: After deleting the Windows-BT folder it reappeared a few hours later. I decided to check from system updates and surely enough one was downloaded and pending to be installed. After installing the update the Windows-BT folder disappeared on it's own and a new folder taking up 20GB called Windows.old was created. I then followed this tutorial to remove the .old folder and I had all my disk space back! NOTE: Disk Cleanup wasn't able to find the Windows.old folder, this is why I had to delete it from the settings app.
%temp% typically points to %systemdrive%\Windows\Temp - which is the default system wide temporary folder. However, its good security practise for each user to have their own temp folder which are located %systemdrive%\users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp (replacing "USERNAME" for each folder in the users folder). Also, checkout the recycle bin - anything lurking in there?
Obviously be careful with this approach, you could damage an application or windows component by deleting its files. But with a little common sense and some research you can make good space savings and uncover wastage you would probably not otherwise notice and claw back some precious storage.
Windows is much better at cleaning up after itself these days, but applications will often create temporary files, documents, media files, save games etc. Check Desktop, My Documents and Music, Pictures etc - remove any junk, default files. Also, when you uninstall a program often the installer will only delete the files it installed - so you end up with logs and crash dumps and other junk left behind even after properly removing software.
May be worth checking your System restore settings by default it will reserve a percentage of your disk. I dont recommend disabling it entirely, but it can make sense to restrict its size if your space limited at the cost of having fewer restore points to roll back to in the event of an issue.
I think theres probably lots of reasons for some drift, exactly what depends on your system. Without seeing whats using the space in your Windows folder i can only guess, but below are some of the usual suspects/fixes.
Windows updates stores files here. In theory it should clean up this directory but you might have old updates that failed or became stuck for whatever reason. You can delete files from here, some of the files will return. You will probably need to use safe mode or stop both the Windows Update and BITS services to delete these files.
This folder is required, but is not often used. You can safely enable compression of this folder to save a little space. (Enabling compression saves space, but requires more CPU time - i would only enable this on folders that are used infrequently).
There are a load of default optional components installed that dont appear in the add remove control panel. You need to launch a Powershell window as Administrator. Run this command to list the installed packages:
The above commands uninstalls the packages, the next set of commands removes the installation packages entirely (and c:\Windows\InfusedApps will get smaller - dont edit this folder directly). Same process, list the available packages, then remove them as required. You need to have uninstalled the package before you remove it, and some packages are not removable (without ugly/unsupported hacks at least)
You should hav additional options for cleanup, including removing Previous Windows installation(s), a prime offender -- after each Windows update, old files are kept so you can revert. On the More Options tab, you can remove Restore Points.
There are other cleanup tools, such as Wise Disk Cleaner and CCleaner, that can remove more files, such as alternate browser (e.g. Firefox, Chrome) cache. Use these with caution, lest you delete browser passwords, etc.
This thing happened with me too.It was showing 88 GB temp files but when i click on it it was only showing 45 GB when you sum it up.To delete those temp files, first of all make sure you enable "Hidden files,folders and drives". Just search "File explorer options" then click on the view tab and find hidden files option and enable it.enter image description hereNow go the Temp folder where these extra files are there.C:\Users(username)\AppData\Local\Tempenter image description hereThe AppData folder would look something like this.You can even crosscheck the temp file size by clicking on the temp folder , properties and you can see the folder size.Delete all the files, but after 96-97%-ish there will be files where you have to grant permission skip those files , don't delete them. It worked for me perfectly. The remaining temp files size would be just around 100 mb so not a big problem if you skip them.To be honest I dont know what would happen if you delete all the files(including the ones where you have to grant permission) but most of the clutter will be cleared and there will be no problem.Just click on "Do this for all current items" and click on skip.enter image description here
I found out my Windows 7 installation which is more than a year old has a bloated Windows (C:\Windows) directory (20GB). Correct me if i am wrong but i don't think this is normal. Is there a way i can fix this and prevent it from happening?
One thing you can do to shrink your windows install is remove the uninstall files for the service packs. Running the following command as a elevated command prompt (right click Run as Administrator) will remove the uninstall files and free up some space
However I am willing to bet that windows is not taking up as much space as you think, the windows sxs (Side by side) system uses Hard Links on the files. Most tools (including windows explorer itself) will count both copies of the file when calculating folder size, however due to how hard links work both copies use the same physical spot on the hard disk so it does not take up that much room.
Greetings, I am a recent hire at my company and new to Sophos. I have been asked to investigate why files are piling up in the C:\Windows\Cryptoguard folder. They have consumed 20GB on our c drive which nearly out of space.
Based on searches it seems that this folder is used to hold files suspected of being ransomware, is that correct? Last night the Sophos was updated, and this morning there were 844 files added to the folder after reboot, where there had only been 6 since June.
I would open a support case for this, you could have malware or it could be a false positive or have something to do with (if) how you are encrypting files on this server at rest or in motion that is causing Sophos to flag them. Whatever the reason I would open a support case to get some help quicker than you may or may not get in here.
c80f0f1006