Two simple tips to free 7 GB under seven7/vista ;-)

Hello people !

If, like me, you can't afford more than a 64 GB SSD ...or just want want to free space on your HDD, the following might interest you. You can cut off til 7GB of the 17 GB used after a Win7 ultimate x64 installation by disabling useless stuff.

It works on both Vista/Seven

First, check "show hidden files, folders and drives" and uncheck "hide protected operating system files" in Folder options/View.

Now, let's take a look to your HDD root (C:/)
You should now see two huge files, pagesys.sys and hiberfil.sys. We are going to take care of them.

Hiberfil.sys
We are gonna desactivate hibernation (do it only if you don't need it of course).

Start menu/all programs/accessories then right click on command prompt and choose "run as administrator".
Type "powercfg -h off" and validate.

Congrats, hibernation is desactivated and hiberfil.sys has been deleted. (-3GB)

Pagesys.sys
We are gonna tweak Virtual memory management, which isn't essential if you already have enough memory (3/4 GB)

Go to Control panel/System and Security/System (or just push Windows logo key+break key) and choose "advanced system settings" on the left.

In the performance area, click on "settings". Then choose the advanced tab and in the virtual memory area, click on "change".

Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives".

Now, either you choose "no paging file" or if you're not sure and prefer the safe way, you can simply reduce the amount of virtual memory by choosing "Custom size" and type whatever you want. 200-1000 respectively for initial/maximum size for example. Don't forget to click on "Set" and then click "OK".

The computer will reboot.

Done. Pagesys.sys size has been reduced to the size you choose. (-4GB for me)

Hope it'll help ;-)

 

Oh boy. Here we go again.

 

Some programs doesn't play well with limited pagefile such as Adobe CS4 and in fact will tell you you are low or no memory left even though you might have 8gb RAM or more. CS4 needs unrestricted pagefile in order for it to work properly. Yes I agree you can restrict the amount of memory use if you don't need it but the OS does well with it on. Hibernate... it's a necessity for me. For a large HDD/SSD drive why even bother to tweak it. These minor tweaks doesn't make sense anymore because the OS is supposed to be more efficient and with faster CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, SSD it shouldn't give any problems. Some tweaks save you some millisecs of speed but that's nothing nowadays. I kind of giggle about faster boot times and shutdowns. True it might look impressive but I'm more about the system not crashing at all. I can wait an additional 5-20 secs for it to load.

 

Well the hibernation thing, sure, if you dont use it but i cant recommend messing with pagesys/virtuel memory.

If you really want space, i'd recommend you vLite or something

 

Bingo! DO NOT GET RID OF PAGE FILE. Let Windows Manage it. I always get rid of hibernate though. I never use it. It's either sleep or its off.

 

If you barely stress your laptop, then ya, no pagefile will be fine. If you are like us and actually have to keep several applications open, the you'll run into errors popups like a malware site.

 

From a computing perspective, that's barely stressing your laptop.

Aside from Photoshop, none of those programs uses more than ~200MB of memory each.

 

Gaming is really what is going to kill your memory, that and video editing or even photoshop with large enough images.

I can eat more than 4GB of ram easy on my W90 if I tried.

 

Indeed, many of us can easily use up 4GB or more - for instance, my network infrastructure simulation made up of 21 Linux virtual machines won't even fit inside 4GB of RAM, even though each VM only has a paltry 256 MB of RAM assigned to it.

I'm simply pointing out that Matrix Leader, in particular, is not using his/her laptop intensively at the moment he/she made that post.

 

Maybe you should just move the pagefile onto another drive, that will be nice to your SSD.

 

Hard to take you seriously when you count an instant messenger, a codec pak(which isn't loaded into memory until it is actually needed), and an antivirus(which uses minimal resources until it scans) as your suite of apps.

Load up Outlook (a real messenger app), 30 tabs in Firefox(that would be a light news day), one PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro, OneNote, Word, 5 tabs in Chrome, an MP3 Player, and RDP/VNC. And I won't even need to bother with the background apps. This alone hits the 2.9GB spot with a 4096MB page file. Load up a real suite of work apps and lets start talking.



We assume programs will tell you when they crash due to OOM errors. Most of the time that is rarely the case.

 

7Gb..hm, what can i do with that 7Gb as comparing to leaving my system stable?
Oh yeah, 10 years, 7Gb was a lot.

 

Has there been a real thread about space savings in W7?

Thinking about dualbooting W7 on a 80GB X25-M, so the smaller the OS, the better since there'll be two of 'em.

 

You could try vLite...

 

cinema 4D and 1 file and his 4GB of ram is reduced to nothing...

 

Whatever. Do what you will. I disabled pagefile on my netbook with XP and 2GB RAM, but only becuase I didn't multitask much. Well, mainly because you can't. But anyone that has done some form of decent multitasking, pagefile is needed even if all RAM isn't used.

I guess I'm a noob after dealing with Windows/DOS based PC's for the last 25 years.

 

well, on xp disabling the page file actually gains performance, so it's useful. on win7, it's of no use.

i had vista on a 32gb ssd, together with apps and data, and could use it without problems. i have not touched pagefile and hibernation at all, as it's useful for me.

those tipps are unneeded.

 

So just because you don't need them, automatically means no one else in the entire world needs them. Great logic.

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I wanted more space, so I got rid of hibernation and just use "sleep".

I keep my page file at a low 800mb simply because some games complain when it's off, but I don't multi-task at all so I could probably easily get away without a page file.

 

Tips are fine, just be sure to list the caveats. Nothing would be more annoying than disabling your pagefile only to get repeated BSOD's or system freezes.

 

no. but there is about no one who lived with vista on a 32gb disk, so i count myself as a quite extreme case, and still had no need.

and the rest is just you wanting stuff. there is no real technical need to do it the way you did, but it's you wanting it.

page file disabling should get forbidden by the os, people don't get how it's a) useless and b) harmful

hibernation disabling is feature loss. and if you care about those maybe 7gb, then you have a too small disk.

 

Technically you don't need a computer at all, so please don't use that lame "needs vs wants" argument.

Yes, my 128gb ssd is too small, but I don't want or "need" an external hard drive and some of us can't afford to go all out on hardware.

And of course disabling hibernation is a feature loss. Disabling anything will result in a "loss". Is that not the whole point in disabling stuff?

I will celebrate the day when you realize not everyone likes or "needs" to run their computer the same way you do.

 

So where do you notice the performanec difference, big guy?

 

heh, better celebrate each day i don't. you get more out of life, then

i do know that each has other needs. i find it very funny to see that much people stating how much they need that free space while they get more out of cleaning out which stuff they really don't need. but that would mean, they would have to agree that they made an error, or have their own stuff not really under control..

if, on a 128gb disk, 7gb makes the difference between enough, or not enough, then the chance to be not-enough in half a year or so is very high. it's, what we call in german, a "tropfen auf den heissen stein", thanks to google, it's like "a drop in the ocean".

 

I wouldn't recommend managing the page file manually or even touching the hiber.sys file as it is important for laptops.

Perhaps the only hard drive space saving tip I can recommend is limiting the space available to System Restore in Windows Vista and 7, since they both love making restore points.

 

Hibernation is only more useful then sleep if you take the laptop around a lot. I am always near an outlet, so there's no point in picking hibernation over sleep.

 

Not everyone shares your needs, or lack thereof.

 

Very true

I just wanted to clarify because everyone seems to be giving support to use hibernation, but no one has yet posted a reason to use sleep instead.

If anyone needs more info on hibernation vs sleep, check here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Sleep-and-hibernation-frequently-asked-questions

 

Whatever the personal preferences of individuals, it's a good idea to have both. Besides, it's not like 4GB of space is a lot of HD space nowadays.

 

True, but if the user will never use it, what is the point in having it? 4GB may not be a lot, but it's still a waste of 4GB if it's never utilized.

 

I don't like the idea of turning paging off, just rubs me the wrong way.

However, if you'd like to turn if off, go ahead. If you have problems, turn it back on. Doesn't get much easier than that.

 

And such anecdotal evidence proves NOTHING except you aren't doing anything that could cause the kinds of problems that can be catastrophic for other users if they followed such advice.

Gary

 

Speak for yourself. Some of us make our livings with our computer. So the need is VERY real.

Gary

 

Do you make a living with a computer because you need to or you want to?

 

?... if the alternative is being a garbageman or a male stripper, it's safe to say that Scuderia would need to be a programmer.

 

Let's get back on topic people.

 

Jesus are we really going to parse this that finely? Since I am a developer, I'd say that classifies as I NEED to. It would be a little difficult to be a programmer without a computer, don't you think?

Gary

 

Thread closed before it goes any further downhill.