Comments on: Using A Tiny SSD? Slim Down Windows 7 With Minimal Installs

By: Tina

Tina — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:03:09 +0000

I recommend asking this question on MakeUseOf Answers for help and suggestions. Good luck!

By: qq

qq — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 02:34:37 +0000

Does anyone know where bluclean extracts to when attempting to pull from a windows install disk? For some reason it crashes 90% through the process on my computer, but the files are now taking up space (my disk has gone from 16gb free, to 9, to 7). I would like to find these files and delete, but have no idea where they are stored and bluclean seems to have been programmed by non-native english speakers.

By: Craig

Craig — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 01:02:54 +0000

Hello,

Like all the MakeUseOf articles this is well-written, very completeIt and extremely useful.

Just to make sure I ran this through my Kaspersky Internet Security and Emisoft AntiMalware and the “BuClean Suite.exe” file was clean.

However, it would be useful for readers to receive some advice on the results obtained from VirusTotal:

(1) Antiy-AVL found Trojan/Win32.Chifrax.gen
(2) Jiangmin found TrojanDownloader.Adload.rxs
(3) TrendMicro-HouseCall found TROJ_GEN.F47V0915

Thanks,

Craig

By: Christian Cawley

Christian Cawley — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 07:44:21 +0000

An extremely useful viewpoint, Kevin, thanks for sharing.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 07:43:09 +0000

I think there is a pitfall here: the WinSxS directory. In Windows 7, the WinSxS directory holds almost all the files that make up Windows. The other Windows directory only hold links (Junction Points) to most of the files in Windows 7.

This is insidious because Windows essentially never deletes old versions of DLLs. When you install the various Windows updates every Patch Tuesday, the previous versions stay around in the WinSxS directory – only the Junction Points are updated to point to the new version.

Microsoft has no useful way to clean up old unused files in this directory.

This is why a fresh version of Windows 7 is usually dramatically smaller than a version that has been running for a few years.

By: Kp Rao

Kp Rao — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 23:20:24 +0000

thank you

By: druv vb

druv vb — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:16:56 +0000

I remember doing that with Windows XP installation using nLite, because hard disk space was limited back then. Nowadays with greater storage, I don’t need to slim down Windows 7. And to keep things efficient, I re-install the OS every year.

By: Muhammad Ahmad

Muhammad Ahmad — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 17:40:47 +0000

Really informative and new article for me.

By: cicekci

cicekci — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 19:53:14 +0000

Thank you sharing turkflowers.com

By: venkatp16

venkatp16 — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 17:29:06 +0000

wow.. this looks very simple, let me give it a try on my 16GB USB device.

By: Jacob Twitchel

Jacob Twitchel — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 15:40:49 +0000

Yeah I also prefer to have an SSD and HDD. One for speed and one for storage. I have a 128 GB SSD and I am soon going to add 2 or 4 3 TB HDD for extra storage + a RAID array to back up my data.

By: GrrGrrr

GrrGrrr — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 13:16:44 +0000

This is something very useful & interesting even though I don’t have a SSD.
But it should help me put a Win7 on my USB.

Could you please tell me if it allows creating a USB bootable Windows7 also?

By: Timothy Liem

Timothy Liem — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 09:25:31 +0000

I have my Ubuntu run on 2 GB of storage (UFD) :D

By: Robert Ruedisueli

Robert Ruedisueli — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 08:29:57 +0000

I generally prefer having both a HDD and SDD on a desktop.

Of course, on a laptop, you do not always have this option, unless you have a spare MiniPCIExpress slot or want to replace the optical drive, you usually have to settle for just one or the other.

By: Robert Ruedisueli

Robert Ruedisueli — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 08:26:31 +0000

Creating a striped install is great on any OS.

It can drastically reduce the size, let you preinstall the drivers you want, preinstall all the updates and preinstall a lot of the software you want so the install is cleaner, easier and takes up less space.