Recovering Disk Space & Clearing the Crapware on T400s

[dpam]

Just got a new loaded T400s today, with the 64GB SSD drive. After removing the recovery partition and some other obvious stuff, I still have 33GB being consumed by Win7-64bit and MS-Office. The Dell I'm replacing has Win7 (16bit version) and Office plus lots of other apps in just 17GB of space - What the heck is taking up the extra 15GB of my precious SSD space?

Any ideas of what/how I can remove more stuff to free this space?

Am I going to have to do a clean Win7 Install to get this machine streamlined? If I do how do I get the Lenovo Win7 Enhanced Experience stuff back on?

Thanks for any help and ideas.

[miketoro]

How big was the recovery partition? Was that really worth deleting?

[dpam]

Ya, it was 10 Gigs. Says that after I made the recovery DVD's it ok to delete. In fact, just one button push does it.

[Louis]

I'm interested in this as well, I'll be getting my t400s hopefully sometime next week (dont know how long it takes but shipped yesterday from CN). Im planning on running Linux but Im thinking of leaving win7 to dual boot for certain apps like Itunes. I really need a minimum of space for the Windows partition so the more i can 'slim it' the better

[nikki605]

Can you look at the list in CP add/remove programs to identify larger programs?

[dpam]

I've removed everything possible, and then manually deleted files and folders that were no longer needed. There is a 2.x Gig folder of installers for things like Acrobat which were installed, so I archieved and removed that - still at about 20 gigs. <Note: corrected from first posted version).

What I'm thinking is that since the restore disks have Win7 on one and software/utils on another that if I restore win7 from that disk it may be a much smaller install. I'm going to talk to support to try and get some feedback, but else I'm going to a fresh Win7 from new CD. My only concern about that - beyond having to pay for win7 again - is that I don't understand where the EE stuff (that makes win7 boot faster) comes from - if that is installed as part of the thinkpad utils or it's actually a modified win7 that they use to install.

Anyone with more insights, they'd be appreciated.

[dpam]

Update for anyone interested - I finally got through to thinkpad support (after 3 hours of BS because my 1-day old system was not in their database...).

What I was told was the only real thing to do was to re-install Win7 from the recovery CD, and that presented a 'custom' option which would enable me to no install all the crapware (or selectively install what I want more precisely). I'm doing an image of my drive now then will do that, and report back here as to how small of a Win7-64bit working copy I can get. (At least with whatever extras I decide I need/want). I'll post the details back to this thread for anyone interested.

Also note: I was told that the 'EE' enhancements to Win7 that Lenovo has been promoting as making Win7 boot and sleep faster etc. is, per my rep, in the OEM image and therefore will be part of even a very clean install. Hopefully I'll be able to verify this too after doing the clean install.

PS: I asked why they didn't offer a 'clean install' option when ordering, to spare us this junk and the hours it takes to remove it. My rep said he agreed, suggested that many times, and the 'powers that be' think we buy Lenovo because of the extra stuff - and I'm using Crapware generically as some of the ThinkVantage stuff seems fine and good - but I'd rather have a CD to install what I wanted rather than have the kitchen sink preinstalled. Anyway, the conversation suggests that voicing a request for a 'clean' option at order time would be worth sending to Lenovo so maybe in the future we can have that option when ordering.

[dpam]

Update II: It turns out the 'custom' option has been removed. I ran the Repair/Recovery and found that the option to not re-image the C: drive exactly back to factory state was not present. Called support again, and was told by a different tech that they removed that option. He described another method using the recovery partition (boot with F11) but he was mistaken (i think having tried that) so Lenovo has made it impossible to install Win7 with Enhanced Experience and get a non-crapware install.

The only option is to re-install a store bought Win7 CD, not getting to take advantage of the EE stuff (which sucks, but may not be that life-changing).

That's what I've learned thus far....

[iamdmc]

You could torrent (download) a Windows 7 retail disc and then use your legal license to activate it. Then use System Update 4 to get your drivers and check the support site to make sure it doesn't miss any important ones.

Cheers

[miketoro]

You could torrent (download) a Windows 7 retail disc and then use your legal license to activate it. Then use System Update 4 to get your drivers and check the support site to make sure it doesn't miss any important ones.

Does System Update 4 provide the supposed "Lenovo Enhancements" to Windows 7 that's so much talked about?

[dpam]

Does System Update 4 provide the supposed "Lenovo Enhancements" to Windows 7 that's so much talked about?

No, that's the problem. Those enhancements require the use of the Win7 image Lenovo provided. And what I've figured out so far, is you can't use that image without all the stuff they install with it.

For now, I gave up and am building on top of the 'slimed down' 20Gig base of their Win7 after removing everything I could. Will call Monday to see if there is some other alternative.

[miketoro]

For now, I gave up and am building on top of the 'slimed down' 20Gig base of their Win7 after removing everything I could. Will call Monday to see if there is some other alternative.

Keep us posted. I'll be in the same boat very soon.

[dmccombs]

Ya, it was 10 Gigs. Says that after I made the recovery DVD's it ok to delete. In fact, just one button push does it.

Dpam,

When you did this, did the 10Gig show up as s separate partition that you could make into a D: Drive? Or were you able to combine it somehow to make a large C: Drive?

[Louis]

I just got my t400s today and indeed..the recovery partition is 10GB and just windows itself takes up 20GB of my drive...thats crazy. That's 30 GB of space used up straight from the factory.
I'll most likely be wiping everything out and installing Ubuntu soon but I want to test the laptop as is for a few days to make sure there are no random shutdowns as some have reported.

[tinue]

20GB is not that unusual. A freshly installed X61s with the default Lenovo Drivers (installed via System Update 4) consumes 20GB. Of this I can easily get back 3GB by deleting the Restore Points that are created while installing various Windows Updates or drivers.

The balance to your 13GB 32 bit installation is quite possibly because of the 64 bit: A number of system files are duplicated (e.g. Internet Explorer is both in 32 and in 64 bit version on the drive), plus 64 bit binaries use up more disk space.

Regards, Martin

[dpam]

When you did this, did the 10Gig show up as s separate partition that you could make into a D: Drive? Or were you able to combine it somehow to make a large C: Drive?

The utility itself that deletes the 10Gigs somehow combines the space back onto the C: drive.

[miketoro]

Did you delete the whole swtools folder? Any other big space eaters?

Edit: was reading it wrong actually takes up 19.7gb.

[miketoro]

Did you delete the whole swtools folder? Any other big space eaters?

Edit: was reading it wrong actually takes up 19.7gb.

I deleted swtools after backup to a flash drive and uninstalled a few more programs to knock it back to 15gb.

m.

[Louis]

I got mine to 13.4 on my t400s..dont think i'll be able to do much better...

[crashnburn]

Does System Update 4 provide the supposed "Lenovo Enhancements" to Windows 7 that's so much talked about?

No, that's the problem. Those enhancements require the use of the Win7 image Lenovo provided. And what I've figured out so far, is you can't use that image without all the stuff they install with it.

For now, I gave up and am building on top of the 'slimed down' 20Gig base of their Win7 after removing everything I could. Will call Monday to see if there is some other alternative.

Did you ever get this done? Would love to get a copy of this from ya and check it out.

[Navck]

Does the recovery partition remove the predesktop boot functionality?