Cleaning and freeing up your Windows disk space

[leeshor]

Getting and freeing up additional disk space.

So many questions about running out of disk space, this may help. I take zero responsibility for what may happen using these suggestions. Use them wisely.

There is one location on your disk that does not appear by default. That one spot can accumulate a lot of files you may never see. This is how to find and delete them.

1st thing
This step must come prior to the following step. Go to the control panel. Find "Folder Options" or "File Explorer Options" (depending on the version of Windows you are using). Open that then click the view tab. click on "Show Hidden Files, Folders and Drives" (no problem if you don't see that exact verbiage).

Now you will be able to see the previously hidden folder by going to
C:\users\yourusername\appdata\local\temp. Delete all the files that will delete, (some current ones won't)

2nd thing
In Windows Explorer right click on your Local C: drive, left click on properties, click the disk cleanup button. For most of you the next screen will present you with yet another disk cleanup button to the left of where the first one was. Click that one. The next screen will look similar to the last screen and will contain a list of things that can be deleted, including logs and possibly some leftover updates. (note that one of the item may be your old Windows if you did an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 so be careful if you don't want to lose that). After checking the items to delete and clicking delete files you will need to do a restart of Windows for it to complete. Give it a few minutes o settle down as it' doing some background maintenance.

3rd thing
Grab a copy of CCleaner. Be certain to double check the defaults so that you don't delete some possibly important cookies and/or passwords. Analyze and clean.

4th thing
Go to c:\windows\temp and delete those files. There may not be a lot there but every little bit helps.

If you still think something is taking up some space that shouldn't be double check your download folder to make certain you haven't forgotten a download that can be deleted or off-loaded to external storage.

Extreme Caution follows and not all commands may work on your system

You can also execute the following commands at an elevated command prompt:

(Note that the following command should be in your scheduled tasks)
This command will remove files needed if you need to uninstall service packs. You won’t be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs after running this command:
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /SPSuperseded

The following command will remove all old versions of every component. You won’t be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs or updates after this completes:
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase

This is a utility you may want to try. It cleaned up 3.2GB of files on my system.
PatchCleaner | homedev - software development out of the box I strongly suggest moving those files rather than deleting them.

[LikesCookies]

The path "C:\users\yourusername\appdata\loacl\temp" should probably be "C:\users\yourusername\appdata\local\temp". One can also use an environment variable and specify the path as %LocalAppData%\temp

[TomTrottier]

You can also compress the USERS directory, and maybe some other directories (not windows, not root), and/or move the libraries to a "permanent" microSD. Saves ~20%

[LikesCookies]

With regard to the Disk Cleanup button: I have used the "clean up system files" button on that dialog to remove older system restore points that I know I'll never use again. On one occasion, I reclaimed nearly half of a 128GB SSD sytem disk.

[kelper]

Good info, thanks.

A clean install of Windows 10 will reserve 7GB of storage. As I would rather have this space, I disabled reserve storage.


I also used an app called AppMove to move many apps to an SD card. You can't move some apps but I have moved quite a lot. I have about 13GB free.

-Mod: Unapproved links removed

[kelper]

Inspired by this topic, I decided to try another ploy. I used a new feature of Windows 10. CompactOS, to compress all the OS binaries. This gave me 1GB more space.
I then used the NTFS compression of the whole drive to gain nearly 2GB more. I now have 16GB of free space!

Who has the smallest Windows Installation?

[LemonChiffon]

What I did is install another RAM in my computer for bigger space. Haven't deleted yet any files as I find all important lol But, I'm planning to get rid some files this weekend.

[Zaminth]

How did you install another RAM in your computer? I'm just using a hard drive.