Any way to "trim down" Windows 7 Ultimate?

J

Jakerz

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
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I just built my first PC, I went with a 40GB SSD, that I was planning on just putting the OS and World of Warcraft on, but its not quite big enough ><. Is there any way I can take programs and software that I'm never going to use off Windows 7?

If I have to I guess I can get another SSD, but thought I would ask first :)

Jake
 
Get pro. Lol.

Sorry.

Seriously though, can you uninstall the language packs? Not sure how much space that would save.
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delvryboy said:
Get pro. Lol.

Sorry.

Seriously though, can you uninstall the language packs? Not sure how much space that would save.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
Click to expand...

Language packs are added via Windows Update, not with the OS itself.
 
I used to run Vista64 and World of Warcraft on a 36gb SCSI drive up until about 6 months ago, is 40gb really not enough?
 
Win7 Home Pro install is about 15GB. I don't think Ultimate is much more. You sure 40GB is not enough?
 
64 Bit 7 Ultimate is 20gb by itself and WoW is about 18ish, Im going to uninstall it and see if I can get it to fit with a fresh install, I'll let ya know

Jake
 
I would go into program and features and remove all Window Components that you do not need. See how much frees up. Disable system restore, move your page file to a normal HD if you have one. Delete or move the WinSXS folder too it is 6GB it contains drivers for compatibility mode and it seem the only game you will be able to fit is WoW it really wont matter about anything else. If you move it you have to edit the registry to reflect the location change.

Please note that I have not tried any of this the things I have research for when I purchase SSDs. A lot of site say not to delete the winsxs folder, but if you decide too do a full system back up first.
 
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Jakerz said:
64 Bit 7 Ultimate is 20gb by itself and WoW is about 18ish, Im going to uninstall it and see if I can get it to fit with a fresh install, I'll let ya know

Jake
Click to expand...

WoW leaves a lot of installers in the WoW directory though. It's a lot bigger if you were a day-one WoW gamer downloading patches one by one, but if you install it fresh and download one large patch file, it won't be as big. Still large, but not as large.

I wonder if you can safely delete patch files. I quit the game last October, so I don't remember what the names of the patch files are anymore.
 
Disable the hibernation file and move the page file to another drive, that will free up 4-12GB or so depending on how much mem you have installed.
 
Azhar said:
WoW leaves a lot of installers in the WoW directory though. It's a lot bigger if you were a day-one WoW gamer downloading patches one by one, but if you install it fresh and download one large patch file, it won't be as big. Still large, but not as large.

I wonder if you can safely delete patch files. I quit the game last October, so I don't remember what the names of the patch files are anymore.
Click to expand...

You can delete the downloaders and patch files, I usually download em on my main rig. Then I move them to a network drive to install on my other computers. You can free up about 3 gigs by deleting the patch once you rig is up to date...
 
In order to help reduce space, try the following.

1. Disable System Restore
2. Disable Hibernation and delete Hibernation.sys (find tutorials online).
3. Reduce, BUT DO NOT DISABLE, the Page File. Set it to 1/2 of your system memory. OR move the entire Page File (system managed) to another hard Drive.
4. Go to Programs and Add/Remove Windows Components and uncheck anything you don't want. I'm not sure if it actually saves space doing this since the installation cab's are not actually deleted. Then move to Programs and remove anything you don't need.
5. Do not install anything from WU except for the Critical Updates (no optionals).
6. Do not install the 'newest' drivers because they often are bloated with GUI elements that are uncessary. Only update the drivers if the device doesn't work with Windows 'out-of-the-box'.
7. DO update video card drivers, but add/remove programs and remove the Control Panels (both Nvidia & ATI) and for Nvidia, remove PhysX and 3D Stero.
8. Do a Disk Cleanup and clean everything.
9. Download CCleaner and run the disk cleanup option that removes the rest of the .tmp that DC misses.

In extreme cases you can also view hidden files and delete all of the Windows Update installs, you just won't be able to uninstall any updates. you'll have to find out how to do this on your own because I won't tell you.
 
wow, thanks for all the tips, I'm gonna try them but I did manage to get a fresh install of WoW and Windows 7 on my SSD finally, just needed a fresh install I guess. I deleted all of the patch's once the system was up and running and I have 2 gb's of space left on the SSD, lol

That shouldn't have ill effects on the performance of the game would it?

Thanks for the help
Jake
 
Uhm, the patches themselves will be more than 2GB.

Look to put WoW on the SSD and Windows on a regular drive. Combining the two with limited space...obviously looks like you won't get enough to fit. You really can't trim the patches down. The best you can do is follow bigdogchris' ideas. They would be something I would suggest.
 
You can safely remove the patch files from the WoW folder that start with a patch number, i.e. 3.3.0-***.
 
lol really you should have no trouble fitting wow into a 40 gig hdd with win7 and you dont need to "trim down" windows 7 at all. just cut out all the patches in wow after you install and delete all the game videos and youll find that wow takes up around 10 to 12 gigs leaving you around 10 gigs of free space. problem solved. no need to uninstall any part of windows and feel free to turn off the pagefile completely if all your going to do is play world of warcraft. it wont cause any problems whatsoever. youll have plenty of space for all the latest drivers and things with gigs to spare. allthough i dont understand why you would purchace a 40 gig ssd just for wow. when a 5400rpm sata2 with 80 gigs would be way cheaper and work just as well.
 
Jakerz said:
64 Bit 7 Ultimate is 20gb by itself and WoW is about 18ish, Im going to uninstall it and see if I can get it to fit with a fresh install, I'll let ya know

Jake
Click to expand...

Ah, no.

I have a 30gb SSD. Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate, Office 2007, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8, various benchmarking apps, Norton Antivirus, PowerDVD, iTunes, etc.

All installed to the disk, 10gb free.

Things to look for:
  • Make sure you don't have your 'recycle bin' set to something silly, like 10% or 20% of the disk or something. At least, not on the C: drive. Heck, no real reason to even have it there - you aren't deleting files piecemeal off your OS drive, are you? :eek:
  • Set 'system restore' to no more than 1% of your drive. Or disable it, if you are confident your build is 'solid' (and then DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING!). Default is something like 15% or so, which eats away 6gb right off the bat on a 40gb drive.
  • Move your 'user' files (My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc) to a second 'data' drive. Easy as pie to do in Windows 7, and can obviously save hella disk space.
  • Disable 'hibernation'. You probably don't need it - it saves so very little more power than an S3 suspend state - and there goes another 2gb/4gb/6gb (however much ram you have - it's mirrored to the disk)
 
dderidex said:
Ah, no.

I have a 30gb SSD. Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate, Office 2007, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8, various benchmarking apps, Norton Antivirus, PowerDVD, iTunes, etc.

All installed to the disk, 10gb free.

Things to look for:
  • Make sure you don't have your 'recycle bin' set to something silly, like 10% or 20% of the disk or something. At least, not on the C: drive. Heck, no real reason to even have it there - you aren't deleting files piecemeal off your OS drive, are you? :eek:
  • Set 'system restore' to no more than 1% of your drive. Or disable it, if you are confident your build is 'solid' (and then DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING!). Default is something like 15% or so, which eats away 6gb right off the bat on a 40gb drive.
  • Move your 'user' files (My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc) to a second 'data' drive. Easy as pie to do in Windows 7, and can obviously save hella disk space.
  • Disable 'hibernation'. You probably don't need it - it saves so very little more power than an S3 suspend state - and there goes another 2gb/4gb/6gb (however much ram you have - it's mirrored to the disk)
Click to expand...

I'll add:

And don't turn off the pagefile, again, experts and Microsoft agree on this, you can tweak the size a little if you must, but leave it alone for the most part. It has excellent performance on the SSD.

User folders to D: has saved me the most space. Did the hybernation disable quite a while ago, that saves some.

Disabling System Restore was the last thing I did that saved a lot of space. Installing win7 on the SSD only took about 20 min anyway!

I've got a 60GB and I have win7 pro, Guild Wars (3GB), Civ 4 and all expansion packs (4GB there), Dragon Age (15GB), Baldur's Gate II (3GB) all on the SSD.

Along with MS Office 07 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) and a most of my other utilities.

On the other hand, I just installed stuff like the Amazon downloader, H&R Taxcut, Steam folder, Half-life 1, etc all on D:\Programs

And I've got almost 11GB free.

dderidex: good tip on the recycle bin, I forgot to do that. Moved mine down to 2GB from 5GB. Doesn't save space now (I obsessively empty it) but it might help during file moves and such.

Oh, and when bigdogchris says "Do a Disk Cleanup and clean everything." above - that means run the Windows disk cleanup wizard (type "cleanup" in the search bar).


Lastly:

I didn't find having Guild Wars on my SSD has really saved that much loading time. I mean, you don't spend that much time on loading screens, do you? Most of the time you're running around in an instance of some sort, right, without loading anything? Unless WOW has frequent load times, save the SSD for Windows and put WOW for a HDD. And half the time I just ended up waiting for my buddies to finish loading up anyway.

Dragon Age, though, it helps there, though - frequent loading screens when moving from inside a house to outside, frequent trips to camp, etc.
 
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I have a 40GB SSD (Intel X25-V). It has Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Office 2007, and Adobe CS3 (Not all components, but most of them), and all my usual programs. I currently have 12.0GB free space on the drive.

I turned off Hibernation, moved page file to different HDD, disabled system restore.
 
ISn't moving the page file off the SSD defeating the point a little? According to MS, usage patterns of the page file are a perfect fit for SSD's.
 
GreenMonkey said:
I'll add:

And don't turn off the pagefile, again, experts and Microsoft agree on this, you can tweak the size a little if you must, but leave it alone for the most part. It has excellent performance on the SSD.
Click to expand...
I want to point out to some of you that the page file will NEVER go away, regardless of how much ram you have. Why? Well, having 12 GB of ram that's full, still means it needs to be paged to make room for programs that need access to it. The only way to avoid using a page file is to basically have 2x the amount of the maximum ram you use.

Take a few programing, OS mechanics classes or something like that and you will learn.

Paging memory is a default operation of machine programming. You can't make it go away, even if you tell windows not to do it.
 
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