Win 7: HUGE Install size

Maybe the Page File size?
 
It's been since XP that I have messed around in the bowels of Windows - but maybe that is something you could adjust.
 
Also, look for hidden folders - try to find out where exactly all of this extra size is coming from, and maybe it can be looked up online and adjusted.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hello.  OK, so far I have only installed the OS and updated it, and loaded the MOBO drivers on this computer.
 
Data from My Computer:
C: drive = 42.8 GB
Folders on C drive:
- Intel = 1.77 MB
- PerfLog = 0 MB
- Program Files = 406 MB
- Program Files (x86) = 322 MB
- Users = 191 MB
- Windows = 15.4 GB
Those are the only folders currently on the C drive.
 
So this is curious.  Windows tells me that in aggregate, 42 GB of the drive space is used, but if you add up the size of all the folders on that drive, it comes to around 16.2 GB of drive space.  So something is using around 25-26 GB of drive space, but I don't know what it is.
 
I would prefer to have that drive space for my own uses.  Can anyone tell me what is using all that drive space, and can I do anything to reclaim that drive space?

Aha!!  OK, I think I got it.
 
So, after:
1) changing the virtual memory/page file to Min: 1024 MB and Max 1024 MB on the C: drive
2) turning off Hibernation (as per arachnaut above - thank you arachnaut)
 
the amount of used space on the C: drive is 16.5 GB - approximately what I expect from the size of the files on the C drive.  I've reclaimed over 20 GB of HD space!
 
On this computer, I have 16 GB of physical RAM installed.  Some suggest turning off the virtual memory altogether when there is 16 GB or more physical RAM installed.  I have mine set as above (I read that allowing Windows to dynamically grow and shrink the page file size results in fragmentation of the page file and degrades Windows performance, so I set my page file Min and Max to the same 1024 MB).  Has anyone success with turning off virtual memory when using 16 GB physical RAM?
 
 

I set my swap file (page file) on a separate partition from the Windows drive.
 
I pick one of my other physical drives and partition it in two parts - the top fast part is set to size 50 GB and name it TEMP and set the rest of the drive up for normal stuff.
 
Then I set my swap file in that small partition along with the TEMP path files and stuff like Windows search, Internet Temp files, Google Chrome cache, etc.
 
Even if you don't think you need a swap file, I think it's a good idea to have one for system performance reasons.
 
If there is no swap file on the boot drive you may see an error message about Crash Dump initialization error.
You can ignore that, it expects to see something on the boot drive.
 
Also, I set the Min and Max size the same so that it doesn't shrink and grow and get fragmented. The older rule of thumb was to set the size to about 150% of your RAM, but with multiGB memory sizes that's way too much. A few GB would probably be fine. You can use the resource monitor or task manager to see if the size is wrong (if it fills up right away after a boot).
 
To clean it up:
 
1) turn off paging and reboot so it goes away
2) set it up and reboot to make a new one.
 
If you have Windows 8 or 8.1 you can delete the swapfile.sys and use mklink to point it to that Temp partition. It's used by the Start screen apps for something. That may be hard to delete, I use a Linux boot tool to remove stubborn things like that, or you can mess around with system permissions.