Normal size of C:\Windows folder?

AHA! I was waiting for my first post to not show up! Clipboard, to the rescue:

I am wondering what the standard size of a Windows folder is. I believe a fresh install of Windows 7 is ~7GB, and I'm having trouble believing that adding Service Pack 1 and no language packs puts the Windows folder to 15GB.

My User folder is nearly empty:

And as far as programs go, I have a few standard things like MSI Afterburner and GPU-Z and 1 game. Here's my Program Files folder(s):


Is that normal for C:\Windows to be so large? Is there any way to fix this, or does normal program installation bloat the Windows folder?

I am asking all this because I am using a 128GB SSD, so I would like to save as much space as possible. I read online that running Disk Cleanup and checking all of the boxes would help, and it did. It took my folder down from 20GB to the 15GB I posted here. Is there anything else you guys can suggest? (Or, is this normal?)

 

My windows folder is 23.7gb all updates accomplished (some extra for Office, etc).

 

Aye mamba. Why does it grow so massive? Could anyone shed some light on this? I have almost nothing installed besides the updates windows deemed "mandatory," my single game is 7GB by itself. That leaves about 1.4GB of programs total other than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (the game), and a 15GB Windows file.

 

Spoiler

There's WinDirStat on my Windows folder

 

WinDirStat detects my Windows folder as smaller than it is according to Windows Explorer, but still >10Gb. That seems like a lot. I dunno. It's smaller than yours though, so maybe it is normal...

Spoiler

 

Win 7 Ult, 14.9GB fresh install with Office 2010 (Office in its own folders).

 

Is that just your Windows folder or everything on your computer? Either way that's still significantly bigger than I thought a fresh install would be.

 

Pagefile and Hibernation uses several Gigabytes, and they depend on how much RAM you have (they're not in the /Windows folder tho).

 

I believe I have Hibernation disabled, and I know I disabled the page file. How would I check Hibernation though? When I looked it up, I had to type some commands into the command prompt to disable it.

 

Look in WinDirStat. If it shows a hiberfile.sys, hibernation is still enabled. If not, it's disabled.

 

The winsxs folder (containing binaries maintained by Windows' side-by-side system, in brief, lots of stuff from updates and service packs) can be quite large, and grows over time. On my system here, it's about 8GB. However, many of the files in winsxs are in fact just hardlinks, so they do not actually take up any space on disk.

Bottom line, the size readings you get from Explorer are misleading, although C:\Windows will grow over time.

P.S.: Checked the size of winsxs excluding hard links, that came out to 5.4gigs, so it's about 3 gigs worth of hard links. My total for Windows is 31gigs, 18 of which are in Windows\Installer. There's a lot of software installed on this machine...

 

18 Gb in my Windows folder. So you are OK.

 

Got 2x w7 laptops running, approx 2 years since installed, both 11 G's in w7 directory in explorer. I don't understand how some grow past that, but probably a good reason. Original installation here, all updates, tons of programs inst. and uninst. (but no MS office).

 

Try ccleaner. It helped me shrink my windows folder from 16 GB to 12 GB.

 

Mine is 18.7GB, fresh installed Win7 Pro SP1 in February with Office 2010 and Office 2007

 

Thats not XP is it?