back to article Honey, I shrunk the Windows footprint

One of the challenges Microsoft has given itself with its goal of making Windows 10 run on almost anything is that lots of devices have rather less storage than PCs, which means Redmond can't assume users will have hard disk space to burn. If Windows takes up most of a cheaposlab's 32GB solid state disk, that's not going to …

  1. Khaptain Silver badge
    Go

    Don't stop there

    If they can remove the bloat from a tablet, please, please, please do the same for PCs.

    Small and light is good... honestly, I really do not need tiles, sidebars or widgets that tell me the latest stock prices. Keep it nice and tight, everyone loves nice and tight ( fnnrrrr).

    Why not start of a race to the lightest, smallest OS rather than the heaviest... ( I doubt that they will reach DSL size though but we can dream on anyway)

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Don't stop there

      Years ago, when Microsoft suddenly realised that security was a selling point, they started removing unnecessary features (aka "Easter Eggs") from their products. Surely this bloatware falls under the same category and so should be removed?

    2. Big_Ted
      Happy

      Re: Don't stop there

      Its easy, turn off your pc most of the time and use a chromebook or chromebox. Only use the PC for when you must have that windows only piece of software.

      I started this last year and the pc is turned on at most once a week for a short time, the rest of the time my chromebook does it all for me.

      Oh and the speed to turn on a chrome device against a windows one let alone the wait for the windows machine to shut down AND stop accessing the hard drive as part of the shutdown routine.

      1. dogged

        Re: Don't stop there

        frankly, most malware is less intrusive than Chrome.

        No thanks.

      2. Paul Shirley

        Re: Don't stop there

        @Big Ted

        My wife's Linux box comes in and out of sleep mode in seconds and isn't tied to anyone's cloud. Think I'll skip crippling it with cloud based crapness. Oh, I turn my PC off when it crashes, start:stop time isn't something I work about, Microsoft's inability to have working sleep mode on so many desktops does Anjou me.

        1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

          Re: Don't stop there

          In Microsoft's (partial) defence, a huge number of the problems with Windows and Sleep mode are due to device drivers and in my experience, particularly wireless network drivers but these aren't the only culprit. However one application in particular seems to often make a mess of Windows Sleep mode, sometimes even preventing it completely: Microsoft Outlook. Thanks for that MS.

          1. Hellcat

            Re: Don't stop there

            My Win 10 PC boots from cold to login in something near 30 seconds - and thats without SSD. I can't say I'm bothered about using sleep mode at this point in my life.

            1. Gordon 10
              WTF?

              Re: Don't stop there

              My Company win7 laptop hasn't had a problem with sleep mode in the 5 years I've had it. Admittedly its not virtually instant on like my MBA but then my MBA isn't bitlockered up the wazoo with a 5 yr old SSD.

            2. Boothy

              Re: Don't stop there

              Quote: "I can't say I'm bothered about using sleep mode at this point in my life."

              I've never really understood this boot time obsession, at least not for productivity devises. Turn on, use it, 8 or so hours later, turn it off. The fact that it takes 10 or 30 seconds to boot up, has no real impact the working day!

              For reference, my home desktop, which does have an SSD, spends most of it's boot time doing the BIOS start up bits, (about 7 seconds) once the actual drive kicks in, and the OS boot starts for real, that takes about 4 seconds.

              More time would be saved by streamlining the BIOS, rather than the OS!

              1. Craigness

                Stop the Chrome hate

                "I can't say I'm bothered about using sleep mode at this point in my life."

                As a Chromebook user I ONLY bother with sleep mode. It's so reliable I never reboot unless the OS gets updated.

                "My wife's Linux box comes in and out of sleep mode in seconds"

                I know that feeling! After using my Chromebook, with its instant resume from sleep, it feels like an eternity waiting for Linux to come back to life.

                "My Win 10 PC boots from cold to login in something near 30 seconds - and thats without SSD. I can't say I'm bothered about using sleep mode at this point in my life."

                When you have a laptop which can resume instantly it's a great addition to your living room, kitchen or anywhere! If you want to find out about a movie, do a quick bit of shopping, write an email or start a flame war in the comments section, you'll appreciate having a keyboard and multiple windows instead of using your tablet. If you had to wait 30 seconds to boot, or you couldn't rely on the PC waking up properly then you'd reach for the tablet instead, which is a poorer experience for certain use cases.

                1. Yugguy

                  Re: Stop the Chrome hate

                  It does make me feel very old when I hear people describing 30 seconds as a long wait.

                  If lives are really that hectic that 30 seconds IS a long time then there's something seriously wrong with the world.

                  1. Craigness

                    Re: Stop the Chrome hate

                    @Yugguy 30 seconds is a long time when you want to do a search relevant to what someone has just said, or look up info on the TV show you're watching or some music you're listening to. It's long enough that you might just continue the conversation instead, or keep watching the TV show... So it might not be a problem, but it's great to have instant access to the web all the same.

                    1. cambsukguy

                      Re: Stop the Chrome hate

                      that's what the phone is for though - the quick answer, odds are you won't be in the same room as your laptop/desktop anyway.

                      Odds are you will be in the same room as your phone though, even more likely than having a tablet handy.

                      I fetch the tablet for more complicated/extended searching/browsing and use the laptop if I am lounging next to it, as now, or need a TV show or something (because it is connect to the TV).

                      1. Craigness

                        Re: Stop the Chrome hate

                        @cambsukguy I always have my laptop nearby. I have a desktop in the study because it's cheaper than a laptop and a Chromebook for "around the house" because it's better than Windows. All in, I spent less than the cost of a Windows laptop with Chromebook-like performance.

                        My phone and tablet are always nearby but they're not as good as a laptop for many tasks.

                    2. Deltics

                      Re: Stop the Chrome hate

                      I can't work out whether you are being sarcastic or whether you really do think that continuing a conversation or continuing to watch a TV show is really the least appealing option.

                      "Sorry, I can no longer talk to you, I am busy googling something you just said"

                    3. Yugguy

                      Re: Stop the Chrome hate

                      Ah, well you see I am one of those old-fashioned people who would rather concentrate on the thing at hand and doesn't actually buy into the assumption that instant access to knowledge always improves our lives.

                      Yeah I might have a query, but you know what, I'll look at it later.

              2. cambsukguy

                Re: Don't stop there

                The biggest impact I have seen on the working day caused by booting, rather than waking up a machine is the fact that I may have 10 or 20 windows open in various virtual screens with editors having many files open at different points.

                emacs, as good as it is and VS etc. rarely open exactly as they were previously shut down, although they may be quite good. Also, doing so would, at least, require me to start them and/or select a project etc.

                Added to that the dozens of web pages I might have open and I would rather use standby any time.

            3. JLV

              Re: Don't stop there

              >My Win 10 PC boots from cold to login in something near 30 seconds.

              OK, but you've presumably only had that PC for a few months under Win 10. Unless I missed something major with Windows 8 or 10's technology, with real world use, how do you expect that to evolve as time passes?

              Pristine Windows machines boot quickly. After a few years, not so much - I've often found a reformat and fresh install to do wonders. Another reason for getting a reliable, reinstall-from-scratch-capable Windows license from MS. After all, you've paid for it at this point.

              Hopefully, with 10, MS is going to be more aggressive in gaining our trust back, will remember the Lenovo mess and realize that one way to recover that trust is to not let the manufacturer hijack the OS and essential features of it such as re-installations and recoveries.

              Personally, I am all for their looking into making their OS lean and mean. If squeezing into tablets are the way to enlightenment, great. All the same, I remember that every Windows release since XP has come with numerous "best ever" promises during the tech preview phases. Promises that have often failed to materialize.

              1. king of foo

                Re: Don't stop there

                It's arguably many people on this forum's fault we have windows boot time pain.

                Lazy, badly written startup scripts/group policy have been making "the work laptop" a painful experience for decades.

                Stop it.

                I know you aren't forced to wait TEN MINUTES for your PC to boot so stop being a twat.

                If only the bofh were so evil...

                Cold boot with WiFi disabled and network port unplugged; 22 seconds, otherwise easily 12mins+

                Admit it...

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Don't stop there

        You say that, but after putting an SSD in my box (fnar fnar) and a clean OEM W7 build on it, there's really not a lot in it any more. It's not even worth hibernating / sleeping because it boots and shuts down phenomenally fast.

        For me anyway, YMMV I guess.

    3. Little Mouse

      Don't stop there

      I could shrink the footprint even further - just get rid of all the fancy graphics and touch-screen shit. Sorted!

      Command-line only tablet, anyone?

    4. Jim 59

      Re: Don't stop there

      They have no problem fitting Windows 2008 server on a single DVD. Do the same with Win 10. If the user needs to re-install, they re-install. Also offers recovery from failed disk, which on-disk recovery images don't.

      1. jbuk1

        Re: Don't stop there

        Any reason you decided on a 4 generation old windows server for your example?

        You could have used Windows Server 2012 R2 which also fits on a DVD but isn't 7 years old.

  2. Roger B

    Windows Phone?

    I was wondering how this was going to working last night, the idea of Windows 10 running on my Lumia 625 could be interesting, but surely the 512Mb of RAM is a limiter, it works great right now and if I can get my phone/tablet/pc and laptop all on the same OS instead of the current 3 I like it.

    1. Paul Shirley

      Re: Windows Phone?

      512mb ram was already a problem for universal apps, most of us aren't going to risk dealing with floods of complaints when resource heavy apps fail on under specced devices. We'll just continue writing for desktop mode and leave universal for toy apps.

      Luckily for Microsoft most users only use toy apps on their low end devices, just a pity their strategy will create a further dumbed down PC experience. As if the metro fiasco wasn't enough damage.

    2. Arctic fox
      Windows

      @Roger B Re: Windows Phone?

      I have installed the Win 10 mobile technical preview on a Lumia 630 (bought it as a dirt cheap test-bed and because I am interested in precisely that point - how will it run on low end devices?). My experience so far is that the system apps run fine and most of my third-party apps run ok. The only problem I have had is that one of the games has a tendency to hang occasionally. So far I have not encountered significant problems other than it has crashed once in the last four weeks since the install.

      1. Roger B

        Re: @Roger B Windows Phone?

        I did not even think about installing the technical preview on the phone, great news though, I only use it as a mini tablet, camera and mp3 player, but it will be fantastic to get Windows 10 running on it.

        @Paul Shirley, if you could let me know which inefficient apps you create, I'll avoid everything with your name on it to save you any grief, many thanks.

        1. Arctic fox
          Windows

          @Roger B Re ".....I did not even think about installing the technical preview....."

          I would only issue a word of caution here. The OS is still somewhat rough around the edges and is not yet suitable for a phone that is ones daily driver. It is currently a stable and usable test-bed but I would not for one moment install it on my Lumia 1020 (which is my daily driver even if I could - it is not yet available to install on the 1020). If however, you are not dependent upon your 625 then I think you will find the experience fun.

          1. Roger B

            Re: @Roger B Re ".....I did not even think about installing the technical preview....."

            I was all ready to go and give it a go, made my way over to the preview site, clicked on the list of supported phones and....no 625, so fingers crossed it gets added soon, but for now I'll be sticking with 8.1. The list of compatible models seems quite small at the moment, Lumia 630, 635, 636, 638, 730, 830.

            1. Arctic fox
              Windows

              Re: @Roger B Re ".....I did not even think about installing the technical preview....."

              I obliged to admit that I had not registered the fact that the 625 was not on their current list. They appear to be being exceedingly cautious with regard to the limited number of Lumias that they are willing to install the TP on. Understandable I think given that it does not matter how many dire warnings they give there will always be a certain percentage who are braindead fearless and will install regardless and then begin to howl when their primary goes down the toilet. The fact that they have installed a pre-beta on the device after being warned will of course not hinder them in screaming that it is everybody else's fault but their own. However, for those of us who understand the risks it can be fun and according to what I have read MS intend to add further devices to the list that can install the TP and hopefully you will not have too long to wait.

              :)

              AF.

  3. Daedalus801
    Facepalm

    Modular design

    Whats needed is a Modular design with a small, fast, secure OS BASE with minimal rubbish on top and All extras as user / Administrator add on modules. so By Default

    NO Cortana

    NO Xbox integration.

    One Browser probably Spartan (with option to dump it if you want to use a 3rd party one instead.)

    NO Office or trial software.

    No bloated Media centre.

    NO extra unnecessary drivers.

    ONE UI !!! (no schizophrenia, if the user wants it let them install it)

    as well as a smaller install it also gives a smaller attack surface for malware on the base system.

    Everything else can be downloaded as needed after first install, allow backups of app data to one drive / cloud / exterior storage so a restore can be done from the "app store" and off device backups after recovery of the on device base install.

    "Slap Head" as its although its a good idea ridding the OS of bloat will never happen.

    1. Whit.I.Are

      Re: Modular design

      Try OSX...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Modular design

      "Whats needed is a Modular design with a small, fast, secure OS BASE with minimal rubbish on top and All extras as user / Administrator add on modules. so By Default"

      Like Window Server you mean? No UI either by default.

    3. Craigness

      Re: Modular design

      Like Chrome OS?

      The "bring Windows devices back to a pristine state" equivalent on a Chromebook is the Powerwash function, which removes all users and software and brings the computer back to a clean install of the latest OS version in about a minute. Try that on Windows and it takes you far longer than that just to get to the point where you need to start applying years' worth of updates.

      So selling or buying a second hand Chromebook is as easy and secure as can be, and when you log on to a new one all your settings and software are downloaded for you.

  4. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Apple Internet Recovery

    If there's no recovery image then it sounds like something like this on later iMacs. If you've replaced a borked hard drive with a new empty one it downloads an OS X image and installs it.

    Maybe that doesn't mean a bloatware scrub though, I think MS is perfectly evil enough to store OEMs' bloatware on their update servers and reinstall it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Apple Internet Recovery

      "If you've replaced a borked hard drive with a new empty one it downloads an OS X image and installs it."

      Which isn't terribly useful if your internet connection runs at the speed of an arthritic tortoise. Even today there is still a lot to be said for installing an OS from DVD-ROM.

      1. Phil Kingston

        Re: Apple Internet Recovery

        Optical media? How quaint.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Apple Internet Recovery

          "Optical media? How quaint."

          Professionals use the best tool for the job , not what's fashionable for hipsters this week.

        2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: Apple Internet Recovery

          Quaint, but probably cheaper for the vendor than shipping the same data on a USB stick or SD card.

          But I don't much care and I don't suppose the OP does either. The point is that storing it on the platter is a daft idea unless you are into "fate sharing". (Whether that fate involves a virus attack or a disc head crash is neither here nor there.)

      2. Matthew 17

        Re: Apple Internet Recovery

        Assuming you have a backup, the internet recovery downloads first, this is a tiny program so your tortoise should be OK, you can then rebuild your machine from you backup.

        If you're really concerned about such things then keeping an 8GB USB stick with an OSX installer on would save on the download time. But as hard drive disasters are rare having to wait for the OS to download and install isn't going to be that much of a hardship.

    2. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Apple Internet Recovery

      If there's no recovery image then it sounds like something like this on later iMacs.

      The system sounds more like WIMBoot, which was introduced a year ago with the Windows 8.1 Update 1.

      There is the base installation and all the changes are written elsewhere as "copy-on-write". Just like making VM snapshots. If the snapshot is deleted the computer will revert (reset) to the base installation.

      I think MS is perfectly evil enough to store OEMs' bloatware on their update servers and reinstall it.

      The OS X recovery from internet is a superb feature.

      MS can't offer it since it requires firmware support and a boot medium would be needed, packed with a lot of LAN/WLAN/WAN drivers.

      Microsoft has offered Windows ISO downloads and those of course have been generic and pure from OEM evils.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Apple Internet Recovery

        MS could offer something similar if the OEM were to store the recovery program as a PXE the UEFI. They would have to take a base MS recovery program and add their own drivers.

        Edit: The blog post says it uses a completely different method, so that's the end of that.

    3. rcomm

      Re: Apple Internet Recovery

      I was thinking that the base image may be stored as a snapshot, like on a VM. If you need to refresh/reset, it just dumps everything after the image was loaded. Certainly doesn't necessarily mean no bloatware, in that case. Just that you'll NEVER be able to truly get rid of it.

    4. Dan Paul

      Re: Apple Internet Recovery

      Doesn't work that way in Windows and if it were to then that would still be the OEM's fault. The only thing I have ever gotten when I had Windows Update download device drivers is the drivers, the "Bloatware" was only available from the OEM website, never from Microsoft.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why not make Windows more modular, there is a lot of stuff in there that isn't used by most users but could be added on demand over the net.

    1. JimmyPage Silver badge
      Linux

      Because then ...

      ...you may as well use Linux ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Because then ...

        "...you may as well use Linux ..."

        Assuming your time has no value...

    2. Boothy

      Quote: "Why not make Windows more modular, there is a lot of stuff in there that isn't used by most users but could be added on demand over the net."

      Like XP then? Where you had the option on initial install of the OS, of selecting or un-selecting various things like Games, Messenger, Outlook Express etc.

      You could then launch the same section again after install, to add or remove components as you wished.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Interesting, an official "slim" image for lightweight platforms

    I wonder how long it will take for hackers to "adapt" it to PCs.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who watches the watchmen?

    From the Win10 blog: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/03/16/how-windows-10-achieves-its-compact-footprint/

    "Without a separate recovery image, the Refresh and Reset functionalities will instead rebuild the operating system in place using runtime system files."

    Umm ok. And what happens if malware or a trojan has screwed or subverted these subsystems? Or if they've simply become victim to disk corruption or an OS bug?

    1. cambsukguy

      Re: Who watches the watchmen?

      Not really the expert on this but...

      Doesn't EUFI boot protection ensure no access to the recovery partitions by malware?

      The Surface I have (and I presume Win8.1) allows two forms of 'refresh', one is just the OS which 'keeps' the user data and programs etc. (even if that means hiving off the registry and program data beforehand and re-instating it afterward). The usefulness of this (I am guessing) is that any detritus left behind by OS/App screw-ups gets removed from the registry at least.

      The other is a full refresh back to the factory partition (which may even be Win8.0). Once you log back in, all your programs etc., at least the Store apps, will be re-installed or made available to re-install upon request. The screen layout etc. is recovered and, in many ways, appears like the small refresh - it just can take forever.

      I would like to 'refresh' my Win7 but the sheer amount of stuff on it after 4 years is too much to contemplate restoring - I will hope that Win10 will run on it and give me a clean OS going forward when the time comes.

  8. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

    Do not worry

    OEMs will soon fill up all the space m$ has managed to save with their pre-installed crapware and trial versions

    Maybe m$ could re-write the memory management bit as well to stop it thrashing the HDD with the swap file... very important if your using an SSD

  9. Mikel

    Still Gigabytes

    This is not slim.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still Gigabytes

      Agreed.

      All our OS/2 boxes have a boot partition of 1GB for the operating system which gives us space to add utilities as necessary. IF microsoft can get this new version of windows down to that size then we will be interested in having one VM with it for testing for clients.

  10. Otto is a bear.

    Whatever happened to code optimisation?

    In my day, when Babbage was young, and the UK had a computer industry, (Sheds nostalgic tear) we used to optimise our code for speed and size replacing cumbersome C with tight assembler.

    Does anyone code in x86/64 assembler any more? and before you ask, yes you can, whatever the question was.

    1. bpfh
      Coat

      Re: Whatever happened to code optimisation?

      I only dabbled in x86, but the memory and excitement of getting DOS to reboot instantly without the POST, by calling "int 20", assembled into a 2 byte .com file brings tears to my eyes.... That and the small accounts package that was written in C, and having to play with the DOS 64 kb memory (the .com application size limit to fit in a page), those were the days....

      Today, I have embraced the Dark Side, VB, VBA and, oh the horror, PHP. Still, the tenements of optimisation hold true, as much as you can in a softly typed language. Look for efficiencies, avoid the hells of bloated "make your life easier" frameworks (designers that use jquery to handle the validation of 3 text fields on a single web form, I'm thinking of you...)... Small is beautiful, and please make sure all your functions have a return value, and that you handle that return value, be it expected or not...

      Mine's the one with the Turbo Assembler diskettes and a Symantec C compiler CD in the pocket.

      1. Craigness

        Re: Whatever happened to code optimisation?

        "the tenements of optimisation"

        Sounds like a Dickens satire on economics and inequality.

    2. Jim 59

      Re: Whatever happened to code optimisation?

      No. Instead they pull in 10 libraries, which each pull in 3 or 4 others, which link to others which...

      Hey presto! Hello World in only 25,000 lines !

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whatever happened to code optimisation?

      "Does anyone code in x86/64 assembler any more? and before you ask, yes you can, whatever the question was."

      Probably simple x86 asm. But the modern x86 instruction set is so complex and the pipelining so obtuse that I doubt any one person could write and optimise an assembly code program better than a C compiler thats taken hundreds of man years of work to develop it could compile and optimise some C code to the do the same job.

    4. Christian Berger

      Re: Whatever happened to code optimisation?

      Actually today, unless you are extremely good at assembler for your particular CPU, C-compilers will actually produce better code.

      The problems are with software architecture. People have learned really bad ways of software design resulting in huge software packages, they don't understand what they are going. They don't think about the machine code coming out of their C compilers. They don't understand that complexity is a problem or how to avoid complexity.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Re: Whatever happened to code optimisation?

      "Running Light Without Overbyte." Some do, now and again.

  11. bpfh
    Windows

    Oh the memories...

    Getting Windows 2000 server paired down, installed with Apache and MySQL, running in 48 meg of RAM , absolutely flying on a PIII 700 mhz PC

    Where's the old fogie icon when you need one?

  12. MacroRodent
    Windows

    Decompression is fast

    There's another 1.5GB to 2.5GB to be saved with compression of system files, but Microsoft says it won't put the squeeze on unless it can be done “ without compromising human-perceivable system responsiveness.”

    Huh? Even in Pentium I days, compression&decompression was fast enough so that using "doublespace" or similar was feasible. What time the compressor took was more than made up by the reduction in disk I/O. (Personal experience, used doublespace to get most out of my 500Mb disk drive). Nowadays the gap between CPU and I/O speed is even larger, even on low-end gear, so this should be a no-brainer.

    1. Jim 59

      Re: Decompression is fast

      My puny 120 MB C: was embiggened to a 240 MB H:

    2. Tromos

      Re: Decompression is fast

      As you say, the reduction in disk I/O covered the time the decompression software took, but remember that these tablets and phones are using memory not those old drives with multi-millisecond track change times.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Old update files

    The biggest issue I've had on long-lived windows machines (and to a lesser extent ubuntu) is the ever growing collection of update files (or apt-cache), last time I looked, windows didn't distinguish between old versions of files, and the actual OS in use.

    1. Boothy

      Re: Old update files

      Windows 7 is ridiculous on size after a while.

      My 'Windows' folder on the machine I'm typing this at, currently stands at 23.9 GB (or GiB for the SI pedants out there).

      This is a works laptop (Lenovo T420) with a custom image on Win 7 Enterprise 64 bit.

      This was freshly imaged in Sep 2012, but the 'Windows' folder just keeps growing and growing!

      A quick space check with Glary utils and...

      winsxs 8.60GiB

      Installer 5.51GiB

      System32 2.8GiB

      assembly 2.13GiB

      SysWOW64 1.42GiB

      Microsoft.NET 1.28GiB

      After that, the next biggest folder is Fonts at under 400MiB.

      Question : With the comments above on compression, is it worth looking at compressing any of the above folders?

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Old update files

        Worth compressing? Probably not.

        On DOS and Win16, when you loaded a program, the executables were opened, read, unpacked, patched, yawn, have I forgotten anything, and then used. It was likely that most of the file was read and so compression reduced the amount of raw file I/O.

        On Win32 and pretty much any OS from the last quarter century, the executables would simply be memory mapped and paged in as necessary, so if you only refer to a handful of functions in a large DLL, most of the file is never touched. If you compress your program files, however, the whole file needs to be read and decompressed before the handful of pages you were interested in can actually be used.

        Given Windows' propensity for having (unused) references to DLLs that in turn have unused references to other DLLs, compression is probably a substantial net loss.

        But I haven't made any measurements, so I'm talking out of my behind.

        1. MacroRodent

          Re: Old update files

          If you compress your program files, however, the whole file needs to be read and decompressed before the handful of pages you were interested in can actually be used.

          Not necessarily. If using a transparently compressing file system along the lines of DoubleSpace, a file consists of a number of compressed blocks. You can access randomly something within the file, and the file system figures out which compressed block holds the data you are interested in, and uncompresses only that. DoubleSpace actually worked at the level of blocks, not files, in order to support an unchanged FAT file system on top of it. What FAT thought of as an allocation block was compressed and stored in from 1 to 8 (or was it 1 to 16) smaller blocks, depending on how much the block could be compressed.

  14. Avatar of They
    FAIL

    So close to being a great article

    Two problems arise.

    1, If you take everything off a machine, then it is just another way for M$ to flog all that crap they call "cloud based stuff" which is right into the same ball park as the massive malware, bloat peddler Google. So your small slim phone, tablet etc, will be light weight and ultra fast but won't do anything without 4g web access because everything will be cloud based. Office 365 being the prime pre-requisite. With cloud comes perpetual cost, with cost comes handcuffs tying you into the contract. (And the fact they own your data) You are not buying a licence, but renting access to your data.

    2. If M$ were capable of slimming down an OS then why haven't they done it? The flat install of windows 8 if scarily huge, windows 10 is not going to be slimmer and prettier. I have no faith in their technical skills of slimming it down, yet still leaving a phone with decent RAM and storage.

    ...But if we had a tick box at the start of install saying "I am about to install all of this cr*p, untick what you don't want." Then I can get rid of stuff I don't need, and then ONLY the OS and what I like is installed.

    That would be soo refreshing.

  15. Chris Evans

    Don't Stop there... They've not started!

    I think El Reg's "might offer the chance for a complete bloatware scrub." is a bit of wishful thinking. So far what has been mentioned is tinkering around the edges and not addressing the cause.

  16. Hans 1
    Mushroom

    Reduce Windows footprint ???

    I cannot believe everybody on here fell for this BS.

    They want to reduce the footprint of Windows, fair enough, is about time they did and, instead of looking how to reduce the Windows footprint, they start off with stuff I would not consider part of the windows footprint, I am looking at you, recovery partition. Then they wanna revive doublespace ...

    Why can they not just take a blank sheet of paper, write down all the dependencies they have and work on a modular design ... make sure core code uses one or max two runtimes, make the runtimes modular ... as in, something tries to access the OS/2 runtime (silly example, I know), invite the user to download and install the OS/2 runtime ... leave it out for the rest of us.

    In other words, they are not tackling the windows footprint in any way, they are leaving it the mess it is and try to talk others into using compression, maybe, or removing that restore image ...

    Lets blame manufacturers for the bloat.

    When I install latest Linux with all required whistles and bells, office suite and what have you, it uses about 1.5Gb - the last Windows version that could do better than that was Windows 2000.

  17. Joey M0usepad Silver badge

    I hope theyve ditched that winsxs folder. as far as i could tell that was just a 5gb copy of the install media

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like