where are the $uninstall folders located in Vista?

[Freeco]

Hi guys, under XP I always deleted the $uninstall... folders under c:\windows after a couple of reboots to save some disk space. I don't seem to find those folders under Vista. I've googled, but no results...

I made a custom light version of Vista via vLite, and after installing all of my soft (and that's not that many) there's still 17GB taken on my OS partition.
Not that my 500GB harddrive is that cramped for the moment, but it's a matter of principle...

Does anyone know it by heart, or has a link to this info?

 

[Axon]

You could also do Disk Cleanup, it cleans the updates & more junk.

Or just do a CCleaner!

 

[Freeco]

Axon, as far as I know both don't delete the uninstall folders.
I use the disk cleanup feature regularly (every 2-3 weeks or so). I used CCleaner in the past with XP, and I'm giving a newer version a go as we speak.

 

[sidney1st]

Hi Freeco and welcome to Vista forums!

Have a look but don't touch to the winsxs folder.
As you said, why to bother if you have more space that needed, if your principles are above the facts, follow Axon's post but you'll have to do it quite often to save few MB.
You can also set your history to the minimum so internet temp files don't take too much space.

 

[Freeco]

So everything is in the massive 8.2GB c:\windows\winsxs folder with +10.000 subfolders, uninstall mixed up with required folders?
That I won't touch. :eek:

I hoped it would be similar to XP, but just somewhere hidden in some system folder...

 

[johngalt]

Have you bothered to check your System Restore as well? I know you said you use Disk Cleaner, but if you are not cleaning out System Restore, at the default 12% setting, that's about 60 GB allocated to System restore :P

 

[Freeco]

yep, I've disabled automatic system restore
I make my own backups of everything that's important

 

[fieseler]

clear out the c:\windows\softwaredistribution\download folder. Its not the uninstallers, but all the updates are saved there after windows update downloads them ready for installation.