# Win 8.1 is 13G on new laptop



## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

Just bought an Acer Aspire E11 laptop few days ago. It has a small 19G hard drive. Almost 13G of it is taken up by Windows leaving only a few gigabytes for anything elsde. How can Windows be so large on the disc? Properties for the Windows folder is 13G. 

I looked around online about this and one person had success by emptying everything in Windows Temp folder which was full of .msi files. 

I need advice please.

edit: I just checked Properties for Windows folder > Temp folder and it is 14.7 G on disc! Windows folder is also 14.7 on disc.


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## sobeit (Nov 11, 2007)

there is windows disk cleanup that will get rid of temporary files. you also may need to uninstall some of the bloatware to regain some space. 

Delete files using Disk Cleanup - Windows Help


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## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

sobeit said:


> there is windows disk cleanup that will get rid of temporary files. you also may need to uninstall some of the bloatware to regain some space.
> 
> Delete files using Disk Cleanup - Windows Help


Disk Cleanup was only 212mb and Acer utilities (only stuff I can see that is extra) doesn't amount to much.


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## Deejay100six (Nov 24, 2007)

Hi,

System requirements for 8.1 says,



> Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)


Source

Glad I never bothered with it now.


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## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

Deejay100six said:


> Hi,
> 
> System requirements for 8.1 says,
> 
> ...


I keep thinking though about the two forums where the two posters deleted contents of the Windows msi files in Temp foider and made Windows much smaller and there was no trouble with the system operation.

Should I pursue this route?


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

This computer comes with a *32GB* SSD drive. I assume it is partitioned with a Recovery Partition. To find out, go to Start/Search and type *diskmgmt.msc*, right click the *diskmgmt* results and *Run As Administrato*r. In the* Disk Management *Window, you should see how the drive is partitioned. You can also get a much larger SSD or HDD and clone the existing system to the larger drive and replace the smaller drive. 
You can safely remove Temp files by Running *T*emp *F*ile *C*leaner by Old Timer.


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## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

spunk.funk said:


> This computer comes with a *32GB* SSD drive. I assume it is partitioned with a Recovery Partition. To find out, go to Start/Search and type *diskmgmt.msc*, right click the *diskmgmt* results and *Run As Administrato*r. In the* Disk Management *Window, you should see how the drive is partitioned. You can also get a much larger SSD or HDD and clone the existing system to the larger drive and replace the smaller drive.
> You can safely remove Temp files by Running *T*emp *F*ile *C*leaner by Old Timer.


OK, I'll try that.

But, first, let me explain something I don't understand. Every time I play a video using Daum Potplayer, the Temp folder in Windows increases, at 100s of megabytes each time. I now have only 3.22 gb free space free space left on the hard drive. It started out yesterday at 11gb free space. Just now, I experimented by using Windows Media Player to play a video and the free space increased from 3.22gb free space up to 3.54 gb.

There is something that has increased the size of Windows Temp folder each time when playing videos using Daum Potplayer. 

The attachment shows the location of the Temp folder. I do not have permission to open the Temp folder and do not understand online instructions on how to get that permission.

Yesterday Free Space was 11gb. As I say, right now it's 3.54 gb Free Space. Reverting to Acer default factory as I did yesterday brings the free space back up to about 11gb.

Every action on the laptop has become very slow with the current 3.54 gb Free Space.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Whenever you install software, play a video, open a web page. Windows saves a Temp file to the C: drive. Most like _Cookies_ for web sites are very small. When playing a video, the software saves the video ahead of playing it to _Buffer_ the video so it plays without skipping. 
To safely remove Temp files download and run *T*emp *F*ile *C*leaner by Old Timer. This will automatically restart after the scanning and removing of temp files is complete.
Please attach a screenshot of Disk Management window with the lower half showing.


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## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

spunk.funk said:


> Whenever you install software, play a video, open a web page. Windows saves a Temp file to the C: drive. Most like _Cookies_ for web sites are very small. When playing a video, the software saves the video ahead of playing it to _Buffer_ the video so it plays without skipping.
> To safely remove Temp files download and run *T*emp *F*ile *C*leaner by Old Timer. This will automatically restart after the scanning and removing of temp files is complete.
> Please attach a screenshot of Disk Management window with the lower half showing.


Only one gigabyte was gained by running the utility. I am now at 4.32 G of free space. On this laptop I have very few softawares installed and they are small, such as browser, a bitorrent client, Acer utilities that came with laptop, Mozbackup, Weather Network, Firefox and a few other very small things. There are no video files or anything else large on the laptop drive that I have added since buying it last week. Yesterday it was 11G after arestoring to factory default. All I have done is browse and watch videos. Each time I watch a video, several hundred megabytes are taken up of free space.

When I right click on This PC > Acer (C) > Temp > Properties, the size starts running up and up for several minutes with no end in sight at over 10 gigabytes and still going up, when I closed the window.


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## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

See previous post. 

Capture2 attachment here shows how far I got to gain permission to open This PC > Acer (C) > Temp. I did not know what to do in this window. 

Even if I do gain permission, though, why is playing videos eating away at my very limited free space? And, further, even if I am able to get into Temp, I would not know what to delete. I have been told elsewhere that I would be seeing a lot of .msi files, whatever they are I don't know.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

There are no other temp files that probably can safely be removed. '
As I suspected, there is a *19GB *Recovery Partition. You would need this if you want to restore you computer to Factory Defaults You can easily get a much larger HDD or SSD and clone the existing SSD to it and then swap the larger drive for the smaller drive.
If you don't want to do that, you can store your personal files (Pictures, Music, Documents, Videos etc) on your external USB drive to save space


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## shokan22 (Nov 30, 2010)

spunk.funk said:


> There are no other temp files that probably can safely be removed. '
> As I suspected, there is a *19GB *Recovery Partition. You would need this if you want to restore you computer to Factory Defaults You can easily get a much larger HDD or SSD and clone the existing SSD to it and then swap the larger drive for the smaller drive.


Yes, and I have already done a reset to factory default twice in the past few days when free space has gotten down to 3 gigabytes. The free space goes down every time I play a video. It only takes a couple of days to go from 11 G free space down to just 3 G. 

Why playing videos is doing this is a big mystery.

This last time around doing a reset to factory default this morning (a two hour job), I created a restore point after installing the several utilities, antivirus, etc that I need. Hopefully, all I need to do is a system restore in a couple of days when the hard drive is once again full because of playing videos.

I've never heard of anyone having this weird problem with videos, and a search online came up with nothing.

I don't think installing a bigger hard drive will be worth it considering the cost involved and especially knowing I will simply have the same problem with free space being whittled away every day.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

> When playing a video, the software saves the video ahead of playing it to _Buffer_ the video in the Temp folder so it plays without skipping.


If you have a much larger HDD you won't notice the space differences. Since it will be minimal with a much larger drive. Also, _System Restore_, the hidden, *System Volume Information* folder, takes up quite a bit of space. You can limit the amount of space that System Restore uses. Running system restore will not remove the temp files created, system restore only restores Windows System files to a previous date. It does not change your personal files or Temp files. 
To see what is taking up the space, use Space Sniffer.


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