Methods for slimming down Windows (without reimaging)?

Posted by win11jd@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 20 comments

I'm looking at spare Windows 11 computer. It's always ready to go on the shelf. It actually has gone out temporarily a few times. I believe it's had everything for Adobe creative cloud software a few times. I have that removed. The hard drive is 250GB. That was fine for most users for a long time. I'm noticing more and more user machines though where the OS is hogging way more data than it should be. I think just Windows is around 30-40GB. With more software, 60-70GB isn't unusual for my users. The spare machine I'm looking at now has C:\Windows with 150GB. C:\ProgramData has 50GB. There's an Adobe ARM folder in there that's 33GB. I've run disk cleanup with admin rights and had that clear everything. Typically, that's maybe 2-7GB. It never has a huge effect. Years ago, I used some free tool to delete things it thought weren't needed from C:\Windows\Installers. I see that's 120GB on this spare machine. However, if you do that, if that software needs a repair install, update or upgrade, or even the OS for an upgrade, those things might produce errors because it's expecting those installation files to be there. Is there anything that can safely delete unneeded date on a Windows 11 machine? I'm tempted to just rip out anything Adobe. I can always install that later fresh. I could just reimage the machine but the situation comes up somewhat often now. 500GB for an hard drive is more of a standard now. But that may be in part because things are leaving GB of old data behind like this. I'm thinking of other user machines that are actually in user where it's User1 who take that job role but then leaves. User2 show up, doing the exact same, so that person uses the same computer (With User1's profile wiped). All the software for that job role is already installed, ready to go. Why bother reimaging the machine in that case? Then User2 leaves and User3 shows up. Same thing. Maybe a few versions of Adobe cc software goes by. Now the OS is hogging 2-300GB with the user profile being less than 5GB. User profiles are removed if there's no user. Appdata\local\temp is cleared for profiles that still exist on the machine. There's a C:\adobetmp folder that can be deleted to free up sometimes a significant amount of space. I've found some driver temp folders too but those don't free up much space. C:\users\account downloads folders. Already cleaned. I tried CCleaner but seems to just remove temp files and leftover things in the registry. No huge data saving. But nothing damaged on the machine either. I'd hesitate to use something like that that's "stronger." It's probably safer to just reimage the machine at that point, except there are the deployed machines in this situation.

20 Comments

[-]

DontForgetTheDivy@reddit

Use the built in disk clean tool. Run as admin and clean system files. Old updates alone can be 8GB.

delicate_elise@reddit

Never use CCleaner in a business environment. Always reimage computers between users. You never know what spyware/malware is lingering. Stop dealing with tinkering with individual computers. Once you get better processes in place at a higher level, this kind of minutiae goes away. It's not worth the time and effort you're putting into a single machine.

ConsciousEquipment@reddit

I have used ccleaner and stuff like that forever never had a problem w it > Always reimage computers between users. that's a ton of effort, especially if you have lots of them.

Because CCleaner is making a lot of assumptions about what can/should be removed. It can get them wrong, and you don't know it until you're troubleshooting a seemingly random unrelated problem 6 months later. The Windows registry and files don't need to be "cleaned". CCleaner is not smarter than the developers of the software it is "cleaning". It's one of those things that people very early in their careers tend to think is good, but it really comes from a place of not understanding risk and not having the wisdom of seeing random shit break from these random ass unsupported tools. It's like if you hired a maid to come in and clean your house and she started throwing out the junk in the garage without asking you in order to make everything more tidy.

iHopeRedditKnows@reddit

You should be reimaging a computer after it's issued to a user and returned period. Nothing about this process is safe. There's a lot more concerns than disk space when it comes to reissuing a machine.

> should be reimaging a computer after it's issued to a user and returned that's a ton of effort, this is fine

sonicc_boom@reddit

OSempic

bbqwatermelon@reddit

[Link](https://damnsmalllinux.org/)

anonymousITCoward@reddit

Thanks... now that stupid commercial tune will be in my head for the rest of the day... oh oh OSEMPIC... blah blah blah

Malaka__@reddit

AtlasOS

BlackV@reddit

man all of my virtual machines are sitting here at 128gb (admittedly single user low usage) but reimageing *is* the solution realistically, cleans the patching files, cleans onedrive caches, cleans unused apps you are fighting a loosing battle, windows is only going to get larger

St0nywall@reddit

250GB is NOT fine for Windows 11. It was a bare minimum for a functional Windows 10 machine, but those were always recommended to have 500GB minimum. Put a 500 or 1TB hard drive in the computer or re-image it each time it comes in. I understand you may not have the budget for this, but if you do have it and just don't want to increase the drive size, then there's nothing I can do for you.

-King-K-Rool-@reddit

Always reimage between users... I have like 4 boot drives sitting on my desk right now, even have autopilot scripts for adding them to domain and intune on the drives, the entire process of reimaging and adding to the domain and(if its a new pc) intuning it takes me like 5 minutes then I walk away from the pc for half an hour and when I come back its done... theres zero reason to not be doing this.

BCIT_Richard@reddit

Reimage that bad boy.

brekfist@reddit

compact /C /S all those C:\\Windows\\Installers type dirs

GeekMan85@reddit

Check your virtual ram/ page file size

ChiefWetBlanket@reddit

Just did a fresh install of Winders on a VM to show someone how big it actually is and it came in at a svelte 18GB. Windows doesn't require much space, just have to do some basic stuff. Standard process I do to get the smallest installation for modern Windows is to slipstream your updates and drivers into the installer media. That eliminates the whole "run updates and wait" part of OOBE and doesn't contribute to the WinSxS cache out the door. Slipping in the drivers leaves it to just the needed driver INFs and CABs rather than all the installers spreading their crud everywhere. Compact OS is one thing that I am pretty sure folks don't know about. It's automatically enabled for small drives but it's perfectly fine to use on large ones. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/compact-os?view=windows-11 Beyond that, what are you installing that is bloating up the installer cache? Are you doing this via MSIs? Do you care if you can "repair" things like Adobe Acrobat Reader and things like that? Crap in AppData, pretty sure you might have browser cache or something plopping down in the odd folder. Run Wiztree and you can find what's eating up space. You can easily reduce the size considerably, just need to know a bit more.

Sorry, read that wrong. I thought you were imaging, not that you are reusing the pre-imaged machine. Run this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/clean-up-the-winsxs-folder?view=windows-11 That should clear out some of the junk. Otherwise stick with Wiztree, see what is hogging it all up.

Caucasian_Thunder@reddit

Maybe give it a run through TreeSize or some other utility to see if you can pinpoint where the bulk of the storage is being consumed. Occasionally there are some temp or other system files that will get extremely bloated for one reason or another. Had one guy with 40gb of .dmp files from some Excel crashes back in October when he was finishing up some *heavy* spreadsheets for a project, for example. We have 256gb drives on our standard devices and its more than enough for 99.5% of our users if they're responsible with data and utilize SharePoint/OneDrive correctly.

Kumorigoe@reddit

> I'm thinking of other user machines that are actually in user where it's User1 who take that job role but then leaves. User2 show up, doing the exact same, so that person uses the same computer (With User1's profile wiped). All the software for that job role is already installed, ready to go. Why bother reimaging the machine in that case? Why doesn't your imaging process install all the needed hardware to begin with? The problem isn't that reimaging is a bad idea. It's that your imaging system is not doing what it needs to.

Reply to Post

20 Comments