Windows 7 stripped down

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Hi Everyone,

I have a 8 GB solid state hard drive , Windows 7 ” home ” just fits in this amount of memory, with about 5 MB to spare.
But, I keep getting ” low disk space ” warnings .
What features can I remove from Windows 7 , to gain a little more free space?

Peter

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Hi Everyone,

I have a 8 GB solid state hard drive , Windows 7 ” home ” just fits in this amount of memory, with about 5 MB to spare.
But, I keep getting ” low disk space ” warnings .
What features can I remove from Windows 7 , to gain a little more free space?

Peter

Hi peter and welcome

How big is the page file and where is it located

Ken

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Hi Peter,

Your SSD is well below the published Microsoft hard drive requirements to run Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. You can view their system requirements here . I am assuming your reference to Windows 7 “Home” refers to Home Premium as Windows 7 Home Basic is not available for sale except in emerging markets around the world. Activation would have to be done within one of those nations as well.

Meeting Microsoft’s system requirements are necessary if you want to run Windows 7 effectively and efficiently, but if you want to try to tweak your install to see what you can do, there are some ideas available to look at. Check this one out.

Let us know what you come up with.

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Hi Gerald and Ken,

Thank you for your reply.
Gerald, the link that you provided , was for installing Windows 7 on a Dell Mini 9, which is exactly what I’m trying to do.
I think that , since it’s release, it has gotten bigger , so it requires a little more room than the article said.
Also, I want to use Firefox , and that took up a lot of room.
What I’d really like to do is remove Internet Explorer completely, to free up room for Firefox.

I get page file size errors, so I’m trying to add a 4 GB external memory card in the SD card slot, and use that for the page file.
I’m not sure that will work.
Does any one have experience with using an external memory for a page file?

Peter

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I would not even attempt to move the page file to an SD card. Internet Explorer is a component of Windows; you can hide it but you cannot delete it.

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I would not even attempt to move the page file to an SD card. Internet Explorer is a component of Windows; you can hide it but you cannot delete it.

With Windows 7 you can turn IE off completely. You use Control Panel | Programs | Programs and Features | Turn Windows features on or off. This does more than just hide it. Hiding it is what happens when you set program defaults. This does not completely remove all traces of IE from your system because of the servicing model for Windows 7. With Win7 all code for all versions is loaded to your PC. That’s how the “Anytime upgrade” process can happen quickly and painlessly. Turning IE off does remove the UI pieces of IE from “Program Files” so for all intents and purposes it is uninstalled.

Joe

--Joe

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With Windows 7 you can turn IE off completely. You use Control Panel | Programs | Programs and Features | Turn Windows features on or off. This does more than just hide it. Hiding it is what happens when you set program defaults. This does not completely remove all traces of IE from your system because of the servicing model for Windows 7. With Win7 all code for all versions is loaded to your PC. That’s how the “Anytime upgrade” process can happen quickly and painlessly. Turning IE off does remove the UI pieces of IE from “Program Files” so for all intents and purposes it is uninstalled.

Joe

Mea Culpa, Joe. It was a poor choice of words to say you can “hide” Internet Explorer. The point that I was trying to make is that whether IE is hidden or turned off, it will not help to recover any real disk space, as this MS link bears out.

As far as the user can discern, when IE is turned off it appears to be uninstalled but that will not help Peter gain any disk space, which is his goal in this thread.

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How about turning some services off?

Black Viper

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It’s probably a bit early, but I too would like to see Windows 7 on a diet, a diet of my choosing.

And getting rid of some of the bloat that gets hard linked to the winsxs folder would be a good start.
I have over 10,113 links in the winsxs folder and no way to tell where/what exactly they link to.

What I’d like to do is selectively remove functionality that I have no use for with my particular setup.
I’m guessing that there are hundreds of drivers for which I don’t have hardware needs for, and probably
never will.

You won’t be hearing that last on this subject.

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Hi Everyone,

I have a 8 GB solid state hard drive , Windows 7 ” home ” just fits in this amount of memory, with about 5 MB to spare.
But, I keep getting ” low disk space ” warnings .
What features can I remove from Windows 7 , to gain a little more free space?

Peter

You have Vlite but author has went to work I guess you say
http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/153-vlite/
Will reduce the image size in Vista but there are problems with 7 but some reduction

Other programs seeking to do the same things but none are there yet
http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/167-unattended-windows-7server-2008r2/

I have over 10,113 links in the winsxs folder and no way to tell where/what exactly they link to.

you need to look at winsxsmanifests actually, like to start on a 64 bit there are 13,078 files
I am one of he people looking at reducing stuff but this will take time. It’s not as simple as XP where you had 750 .inf files to start with

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