Alleviating pressure caused by component store size
I just wanted to make you all aware of a new KB article myself and a couple of teammates put together around component store growth and remediation. I wanted to have something short and to the point and I think a lot of you might find this more useful than sifting through the blog trying to piecemeal together the same information. I'll probably try to put together something a little more verbose here that goes more into the internals of some of this but I am busy working on a new project and dont have tons of time. If you have any questions or comments about the material please ask them here.
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2795190/EN-US
--Joseph
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm not sure where that KB went. It was basically a collection of a lot of the information on my blog rolled into an all up troubleshooting KB if its the one I was thinking of. I'll ask the internal publishing teams.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
Found it, it was republished as: support.microsoft.com/.../EN-USAnonymous
January 01, 2003
I know Joseph :( But it's the ONLY way to really reduce the space usage and it makes sense to have a lower amount of packages which the servicing stack has to handle to avoid slowdowns.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Yes, thats the correct result. Uninstalling the update in this case only moves the package to a staged state, meaning, its still on the disk in the event that you need it later (because possibly you remove the supersedent KB). Eventually, the scavenger will remove the files like these.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@tester the files are removed later when the PC is idle. Also if you remove packages from an image, the files are still in the WIM and will be deleted after you installed the Windows. Wait a few minutes and the files are gone.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
@joseph Can you add the pnputil to remove older drivers from the driverstore (pnputil -e to view all drivers and pnputil -d oemXXX.inf to remvoe them)? This also reduces the size. For Windwos 8 it would be good to move the drivers out of the install.wim to the DVD and only install the drivers to the DriverStore for devices which are found on the current PC. Next time a new device is detected search on WU (like you shown in the other topic) for updates or insert the Windows 8 DVD/ISO. @xpclient the size if set by default to 75% in Windows 7: "Windows reserves disk space for hibernate in the hibernation file, which is named Hiberfil.sys. For Windows 7, the default size of the hibernation file is equal to 75 percent of the total physical memory on the system. For example, on a computer that has 2 GB of RAM, the default hibernation file size is 1.5 GB. " download.microsoft.com/.../HiberFootprint.docx old NT 5.x servicing was a disaster. Every pathday I had issues that updates were installed, but the files were not updated.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks Drew; Good comments on both accounts, I'll see what I can do to have those added.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Andre; Not a bad idea, but might be tough to implement, I'll add this to my list :) @Harry; The way we do it in Win7/2008R2 is on an interval where the processor has been at idle for a certain period, it will trigger the scavenger to run. I'll look into the type, thanks!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
I'll give you my perspective on this as an engineer supporting these types of issues for the last 13-14 yrs. Both systems have their problems. The old servicing mechanisms ended up with a lot more torn state systems than what we have seen in Vista ++ related installations. Even as painful as the WSUS SP1 torn state issue was, it pales in comparison to some of the things I used to see. So in that way the new mechanisms work better. However, the new servicing related stuff is a lot more complex which makes troubleshooting the installation issues a lot more difficult for us and for you. So in that way it's bad. I personally like it better as I see the OS evolve but thats just my opinion, obiviously everyone has their own opinions.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I want a tool running as scheduled task each month after the Patchday to check for superseded updates and remove them to keep the WinSxS folder as small as possible. Please create such an tool for us.Anonymous
August 12, 2011
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August 13, 2011
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August 14, 2011
How often, or under what circumstances, is scavenging performed automatically on Windows 7? Typo: the sentence beginning "NOTE: Scavenging is performed automatically on Windows 7" does not have a full stop. (Or is part of the sentence missing?)Anonymous
August 15, 2011
Example - system with both kb2548120 and kb2549079 installed. I think the latter supercedes the former. Performed an uninstall with WUSA /uninstall /kb:2548120. Uninstall is successful, reboot. DISM /Get-Packages no longer shows kb2548120. But ... the kb2548120 migUiControls.dll 21725 still exist in winSxS, hence no reduction in disk consumption. Is this the correct result? Thanks.Anonymous
August 16, 2011
thanks! a tool/script to uninstall (or least list) the superceded hotfixes would be great!Anonymous
August 22, 2011
I appreciate the effort for the article and I am also thankful for how you patiently handle comments here but please please please change the design for Windows 8 to require very minimum amount of space. As a user, I am ready to make any tradeoffs like not being able to uninstall or revert hotfixes at the cost of less disk space consumed. Also, there needs to be a way to install packages unattended but with a visual progress bar. XP's Package Installer (update.exe) was perfect and Vista ruined every single aspect of it. I am actively persuading anyone and everyone I know with an SSD to completely avoid Windows 7 and Vista (even though W7 includes improvements like TRIM support) just because of the bloated servicing store. I am expecting and looking forward to major improvements in Windows 8 for servicing so we can have the best of update.exe's features and Vista's package manager.Anonymous
August 22, 2011
The hibernation file can also be compressed in Windows 7 as documented in this article (download.microsoft.com/.../HiberFootprint.docx). I have 6 GB of RAM and on Windows 7, setting it to 60% does not cause any issues when resuming and saves some disk space.Anonymous
August 27, 2011
I beg to differ. I find NT 6.x servicing is a disaster. Systems being unable to boot because of failed and stuck at stage 3 updates, slow installing of updates, growing disk space, inability to slipstream, slow logon and logoff because Windows has to "configure" updates. On the contrary, I had no issues with NT 5.x servicing. Maybe you have disabled Windows File Protection or changed some system settings that is causing files to not get updated.Anonymous
August 28, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler, On almost all of the systems I patch where I download the updates and deploy them using custom scripts, all the scripts that use Package installer (Hotfix.exe) finish in a jiffy and the ones that use Package Manager (pkgmgr.exe) or wusa.exe take hours to complete. I had to insert "time /t" commands on all the scripts that use package manager because of the time it takes to install.Anonymous
September 01, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler, I understand how NT 6.x servicing works, thanks for your insults. XP does not have image-based servicing at all so yes offline servicing is an improvement in Vista, and probably the only good feature of NT 6.x servicing. On XP, you can choose which branch to install, with NT 6.x updates, you can't. You offer no objective reasons to convince me NT 5.x servicing is "bad". For me, NT 6.x servicing is a step back in update installation and system logon/logoff performance, reliability, disk footprint, and service pack slipstreaming. To each his own I guess.Anonymous
September 01, 2011
@Andre.Ziegler, just to confirm, you recommend that turning off the Automatic Updates service when installing locally downloaded updates one after the other via a script will speed up installation? I will try that certainly.Anonymous
September 01, 2011
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March 26, 2012
It also takes about 5 seconds off the boot time (I was hoping for more).Anonymous
January 20, 2013
Hello, where is the KB2592038? It's not available on MS site...