Windows slimming

Nowadays, hard disks are getting bigger and cheaper, but the volume of software is growing faster, and many people still use 20GB and smaller hard disks. How to meet the requirements of software for hard disk? Let's start with the bloated Windows operating system.

The following operations take the simplified Chinese version of Windows XP of SP 1 as an example, and most of the techniques are aimed at Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Some operations may affect the stability of the operating system, so be careful when using them.

The first part:

After installing the operating system, you need to do the following first. Fortunately, the following methods, as long as there are no mistakes in operation, will not have much impact on the stable operation of the system, you can rest assured to try.

1, system restore is disabled. System restore can back up the normal state of the system, and restore to the previous backup state after problems occur. Although this function is practical, it takes up a lot of hard disk space. Usually 12% of the available space of each hard disk partition will be used to save the restore point. If this function is not needed, it can be disabled.

Right-click the My Computer icon and select Properties to open the System Properties dialog box. Then open the System Restore tab, select the "Turn off system restore on all drives" check box, and confirm.

2. Transfer paging file. Paging file is the virtual memory that we come into contact with in Windows 98. By default, the paging file is placed in the root directory of the system disk. In order to save space on the system disk, we can transfer the paging file to other partitions. If you have more physical memory (for example, more than 5 12MB), you can also set the maximum size of the paging file smaller.

Open the advanced tab of system properties, click the performance setting button, then open the advanced tab in a new pop-up window, click the change button, and then re-specify the storage location of paging files in the virtual memory dialog box. Remember, after specifying the location, click the "Set" button next to it to modify the initial value and maximum value of the system disk to 0 (Figure 1).

3. Temporary folder. Many softwares will produce temporary files during use, which will be saved in the temporary folder of the system disk and automatically cleared when the software is closed. However, some software may not be able to completely empty the temporary files due to design reasons or abnormal exit. Over time, temporary folders will take up a lot of hard disk space. And moving them out of the system disk is easier to manage.

Similarly, on the advanced tab of the system properties dialog box, click the "environment variables" button, and then redistribute the positions of the two variables "TEMP" and "TMP" in the window of Figure 2. It should be noted that there are two kinds of environment variables: the environment variable of the current user and the system variable, which are set in the same way. Select each variable, and then click Edit to re-specify the variable value (the variable value here refers to a new path, such as d:\\temp). The new temporary folder settings will take effect after the system is restarted.

4. Disable hibernation. Whether you plan to use hibernation or not, Windows XP is enabled by default, which will waste the space equivalent to your physical memory on your system disk. If you are not going to use hibernation, you'd better disable hibernation to save space.

Right-click a blank space on the desktop, select Properties to open the Display Properties dialog box, then click the Power button on the Screen Saver tab to open the Power Properties dialog box, then open the Hibernation tab and deselect Enable Hibernation. The new settings will take effect immediately after confirmation.

5. transfer IE cache. All the webpages we have visited will be stored in IE's cache, so that if we open the same webpage in the future, IE can call the webpage directly from the cache without connecting to the network server, thus speeding up the access time. But now that broadband is becoming more and more popular, it seems unnecessary to use the cache on the hard disk to speed up access. We can disable IE cache or move to other locations.

Open the Internet Options dialog box under the IE Tools menu, and then click Settings under Temporary Internet Files. If you don't plan to use IE cache, please drag the Used Disk Space slider to the far left, otherwise you can click the Move Folder button to allocate IE cache to a hard disk partition other than the system disk.

6. Uninstall unnecessary components. Windows XP has no custom installation mode, so almost all components will be installed in the system. If you do not need these components, you can uninstall them. But we can't unload anything in the same cabin. Try the following methods:

Enter "%systemroot%/inf/sysoc.inf" and press enter, and you can open an inf file with WordPad, which shows the installation and uninstallation of all Windows component programs. We can uninstall components that cannot be uninstalled at all by modifying this file. After opening this file, click "Replace" under the Edit menu in Notepad, then enter "Hide" (excluding quotation marks) in "Find What", click the "Replace All" button on the right, and then save the file and close it. Reopen Add and Remove Programs in Control Panel, and then click Add and Remove Windows Components. Now you can directly uninstall many components that were not allowed to be uninstalled before. If you need these components in the future, you can reinstall them.

7. Transfer My Documents. My Documents is a special folder. By default, all documents generated by the application will be saved in this folder, which is actually on the system disk. Moving this folder to another partition can reduce the capacity of the system disk. On the other hand, if the system crashes suddenly and cannot be repaired, we can directly format the system disk and reinstall the system without worrying about how to back up the important files saved in my documents.

Right-click the My Documents folder, then select Properties to open the Properties dialog box, and click Move Directly to transfer My Documents to another partition.

8. Close the memory dump. Although Windows 2000/XP has been very stable, there may still be major problems, the external performance is blue screen or crash. As a system administrator, I'm sure I'd like to know why the system is out of order. Therefore, memory dump technology is used in Windows 2000/XP. If there is a major problem, the system will save the data in the memory in a dump file before restarting, and the administrator can understand the system failure by analyzing the dump file. Obviously, for us ordinary users, there is no need to dump these files because we can't understand them at all. Then disable it.

In the System Properties dialog box, under the Advanced tab, click the Start and Resume button, and then select None from the Write Debugging Information drop-down menu. And you can search all *. Dmp files and delete them. At the same time, enter "drwtsn32" and press Enter to open the tool of Dr. Watson, in which the options of "Dump all thread contexts", "Append to existing log files" and "Create fault dump files" are deselected (Figure 3).

9. Transfer fonts. Usually Windows will save various system fonts, with a space of about 200MB. These fonts are stored in the system disk, and we can also transfer most of them to other partitions without affecting the use of fonts at all.

As we know, the installation and uninstallation of Fonts are very simple, as long as they are copied to or deleted from the Fonts folder. Because when we install fonts, we can choose the shortcut of copying only font files, and almost all fonts can be transferred to other partitions in this way. Take installing a new font as an example. Open the Fonts folder in the Windows directory, and then click Install New Fonts on the File menu. After that, the interface shown in Figure 4 will appear, where we can find the folder where the font files are saved, then select all the fonts to be installed (you can hold down Shift to select multiple font files at once), and finally deselect Copy Fonts folder, and then click OK on the right. Through observation, we can see that the font installed in this way is completely different from other fonts in display, and a small arrow similar to a shortcut is added to the font. Moreover, we can copy the Fonts built into the system to other folders first, then delete (uninstall) them under the Fonts folder, and then install shortcuts in the above way. It should be noted that some important system Fonts are not allowed to be uninstalled (because they cannot be deleted from the Fonts folder), so it is best not to tamper with these fonts.

The second part:

If you need to further reduce the volume of the system partition, you can also try the following methods. However, it needs to be explained in advance that the use of these methods may have a certain impact on the stability of the system, so it must be considered clearly before application.

1, system file backup. In order to ensure the stability of the system and important system files will not be deleted or replaced by mistake, Windows 2000/XP will automatically back up important system files. These files are usually saved in the folder %systemroot%/system32/dllcache.

At runtime, enter "CMD" and press enter to open a command prompt window, and then enter "sfc /purgecache" in it and press enter, which will delete all backup files in the aforementioned %systemroot%/system32/dllcache folder, and then continue to enter "sfc /cachesize=0" and press enter, so that the system will not consume hard disk space when saving backup system files in the future. It should be noted that after this operation, if there are important system files to be restored, the operating system will directly ask you to insert the system installation CD. If it is troublesome or you just want to reduce the size of the system disk without affecting the stability, you can also transfer the backup folder to other partitions by configuring group policy. Enter "gpedit.msc" and press Enter during the operation, open the Group Policy Editor, then navigate to "Computer Configuration-Management Template-System -Windows File Protection", and then transfer and reset the location and size of the cache folder through "Specify Windows File Protection Cache Location" and "Limit Windows File Protection Cache Size" on the right (Figure 5). Note: If you want to delete it manually, please remember to delete only the files in this folder, not the folder itself.

2. Help files. If you are familiar with the Windows system, you can also delete the Help file to save space, and just delete the "Help" folder under the Windows directory.

3. Redundant input method. In addition to Chinese input methods, Windows XP also has Japanese and Korean input methods, which is of course useless to us. We can also delete all the folders under the "%systemroot%/ime" folder except "CHSIME" and "SHARED". (If you can't delete it, you can try to delete it in safe mode). Before using this method, please make sure that you have deleted all system file backups in advance (that is, the first article in Part II), otherwise the operating system will automatically restore them from the backup files after you delete these files.

4. Service package backup file. Service Pack is a big patch file for Windows. After installing the Service Pack, the hard disk will take up some space to save the backed-up system files. If the hard disk is nervous, you can also consider deleting it.

After installing Windows service pack (commonly known as SP 1, SP2, etc.). ), you may see a folder similar to "ServicePackFiles" in the Windows directory, and the backup files after installing the Service Pack are saved in this folder. Usually, if the hard disk is not very tense, it is absolutely not recommended that you delete the files here. Of course, you can delete it if you insist. Remember, only delete files, not this folder.

5. Hidden folder after Windows update. Patches installed through Windows Update can be uninstalled, and in order to cope with future uninstallation, some files will be backed up when installing and hiding patches. If you think that the system runs stably after Windows Update and you don't intend to uninstall these patches in the future, you can delete these hidden backup files.

There are also some folders in the Windows directory, usually many of which are compressed. The name is "$ ntuninstallq * * * * * $”(* * * * is a number), and these folders save the backup files of the patches you installed through Windows Update. You can delete it directly. Note: These files are hidden in the bookshelf and cannot be seen directly. You can first set the display of hidden files under the View tab of Folder Options.

6. Back up the driver. Windows will back up its own driver files to the hard disk, so that you don't have to insert CDs frequently when adding new hardware in the future. Of course, in order to save space, we can also delete the backup driver directly, usually the Driver.cab file located in the "%systemroot%/Driver Cache/i386" folder.

The third part:

If you are still not satisfied with the available space on your hard disk after the above operations, please continue reading. Please note that the following operations may seriously affect the stability of the system or bring some inconvenience to future use. It's just "possible"

There are many word folders under the Windows folder, many of which are not necessary for the normal operation of the system and can also be deleted or emptied.

1, C: \ \ Windows \ \ Cursors \, which contains all mouse pointers. If you only want to use the default mouse pointer of Windows, you can delete all the files here.

2, C: \ \ Windows \ \ INF \, this folder contains a large number of hardware drivers under Windows. If you are sure that no new hardware devices will be added and all the hardware can work normally, then all the files here can be deleted.

3. c:\ \ Windows \ \ srchast, this folder stores the search assistant of Windows XP, that is, the puppy or other characters that appear when you search for files. You can delete this folder directly, so you will use the classic search method of Windows 2000 mode instead of XP asking if you want to search for photos or music.

4. C: \ \ Windows \ \ Downloaded Installations \ \, this folder stores installation files of some programs (mainly programs installed by using Windows Installer technology), so that if this program needs to be repaired or other operations in the future, it can be completed directly through the installation files saved here. However, emptying this folder usually does not have much impact on the use of the system, and it is recommended to delete it.

5. c:\\windows\\media\\, which is used to save windows system sounds (such as double click, system login, etc.). ), you can also delete it directly if you don't need it.

6. C: \ \ Windows \ \ System32 \ \ Restore \, this folder stores executable files restored by the system. If you don't plan to use the system restore function at all, you can delete all the files here. However, it should be noted that it is best to turn off system restore before deleting, run Services.msc to turn off system restore service, and then delete all restore points.

7. c:\\windows\\system32\\usmt\\. This folder contains files for installing the migration wizard and related files. If you don't use this function, you can also empty this folder.

8. c:\\program files\\msn, C: \ \ C: \ \ Program files \ \ Netmeeting \ \. These two folders are the executable files of MSN Explorer and NetMeeting, and can be emptied if not needed.

9. C:\\windows\\system32\\oobe, the following is the first login wizard after installing XP, and some procedures for activating Windows XP products. If you are using enterprise XP that does not need to be activated, you can empty this folder (empty the folder instead of deleting it); And if your Windows XP is a retail version or an OEM version, you'd better not touch it.

10, C:\ \ Windows \ \ ms Agent, all files of the agent are saved here. The agent here, like the Office assistant in Microsoft Office application, is a dynamic cartoon image. Usually we don't need these things, we can delete them.

1 1, c:\\windows\\java, Microsoft's java virtual machine. If you have installed Sun's virtual machine or can't use JAVA programs at all (this is very unlikely because many web pages also use JAVA), you can delete this folder.

Finally, there are a few points to say:

First of all, pay attention to the application software you installed. Many software (especially Microsoft's, such as Outlook Express and Office software) will save some files in the system disk by default. For example, all emails received by OE will be saved in the system disk, so that your emails will occupy a lot of hard disk space after long-term use. You can also save these file settings in other places, which can usually be found in the settings and options that come with the software.

Secondly, after this setting, data will not be frequently written into the system disk, and it may not need to be rearranged for a long time after a thorough disk defragmentation, which indirectly improves the operating efficiency of the system.

When installing software at ordinary times, it should be noted that most of the software, even if you choose to install it in other partitions, will still write a lot of files to the system partition, so be sure to leave enough space for the system disk to avoid that new software cannot be installed because of insufficient space on the system disk.

Finally, if you still feel that the space of the system disk is a little tight through this setting, you can also try NTFS partition compression. First, make sure that your system disk is an NTFS file system, then open My Computer, right-click the icon of the system disk, select Properties, and then select "Compress the drive to save disk space" to make sure that the operating system will compress all data on the system disk. However, this compression is only effective for certain types of files (such as DOC and txt), and has no obvious effect on those files that have been compressed (such as zip and Rar). ), so you can choose to directly compress some folders instead of the entire hard disk partition. However, after this compression, the speed of the system will be slower in the future, because the compressed file must be decompressed before it can be read, which requires a lot of calculation by the CPU, so if the computer configuration is not high enough, it is not recommended that you compress the system partition.

Through the above operations, almost all unnecessary files in Windows have been cleaned up, and your Windows is slim again.