Is it okay to remove C:\Recovery and C:\Windows\Installer

I noticed almost 15GB of storage drop ever since I installed Visual Studio (VS itself was only about 5.5GB though).

So I'm not sure where I lost another 10 GB or so. After some research, I realize it's all in Windows\Installer folder.

Since I'm beginning to program C, I tried to remove all non-essentials VS components and ended up having to reinstall VS couple times to finally figure out what's needed and what's not needed.

I looked up and tried MsiZap method but cmd keeps saying it has failed.

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On the other hand, can I remove C:\Recovery as well? I don't need recovery as I do clean install every once in awhile.

Those two are taking up 7 GB of spaces and I only have 15 GB of storage remaining..

I have 64GB SSD so storage are pretty crucial. Thanks! I have Lenovo ThinkPad

 

Do you have Windows hibernate and system restore turned off? You can also experiment with page file size, it can be as small as 500 Meg and others do not have one at all.
From what I read do not remove the installer folder.
I want to try MSIzap also can you link me up?
From what I read it has to be run as admin with the G switch, but I am sure U read that. Thanks, J

 

Sure do. I followed Viper's Windows 7 setting when I clean installed.

 

I'm thinking the problem is either Office 2010 or Visual Studio 2010.

I made a backup of \Recovery and \Windows\Installer directory to external drive, which brought it back from 15GB to 20GB of storage.

And I'm pretty sure the entire Office suite is not 8GB otherwise I would've not had installed all Office suite... I removed Office 2010 following this procedure from Microsoft - How do I uninstall Office 2003, Office 2007 or Office 2010 suites if I cannot uninstall it from Control Panel?

I used Microsoft FixIt and it seemed to remove all components including cleaning registry. Now I'm back at 28 GB.

I'm thinking re-installing Visual Studio by first removing via FixIt method might do more magic(?).

Edit: Never mind, maybe not as magical. Because removing Office suite also removed that massive MSOCache folder.

 

MSIZAP.exe ? The only way to clean up \windows\installer

The file ran fine on CMD. It's just that it failed to remove files.

 

thanks a lot +1 REP I got back about 2 GIG on a real old vista install

 

It seems okay. I re-installed Office 2010 with SP1 update and now it's sitting at 26.7 GB, as opposed to 15.3 GB.

Windows\Installer directory created some files back after Office installation (but only 1GB as opposed to 4GB before), so I assume it will be okay..?

New MSOCache is about half the size of initial.

 

not all programs install 100% into their program files directories.

As you've noticed, a lot of programs will install a large number of shared libraries into /windows/wherever. You want to be really careful about using utilities that claim to clean up anything in /windows.