Found nearly 3GB of space in Disk Cleanup

[HeyCori]

I was curiously low on space for having few apps installed so I went to Disk Cleanup to see what I could get rid of. Apparently nearly 3GB of space was being used to store error message. I don't know what the breakdown was but I'm guessing most were probably display and app crashes. I also found a few hundred MBs for old drivers and software updates. I cleaned out the error messages but kept the old drivers. I was really quite surprised to see how much space was being eaten by error messages. It's something you guys should keep an eye on in case your Surface suddenly loses a lot of HDD space.

 

[WillysJeepMan]

I've seen this behavior on my RT as well. It is one of the things that I think are a deficiency of Windows RT (Windows anything) on a tablet. There should be automatic cleanup. I'm sure someone will respond that those backups, logs, etc. are necessary in case of issues, but they SHOULDN'T be. In other words, Windows RT needs to be more "appliance-like".

 

[link68759]

There are automated cleanups every so often, and if you're ever actually low on space, windows will tell you to run the disk cleanup.

There's no problem or design flaw here. If you want it to run more frequently you could look around task scheduler for it.
Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express Pro

 

[WillysJeepMan]

There are automated cleanups every so often, and if you're ever actually low on space, windows will tell you to run the disk cleanup.

There's no problem or design flaw here. If you want it to run more frequently you could look around task scheduler for it.
Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express Pro

That is true. And I'm aware of those things. Tablets by their nature should be more "appliance-like". That, in a nutshell, is why the iPad was able to gain traction when previous tablet attempts didn't. (yeah, yeah, I know many will claim it was nothing more than the Apple reality distortion effect)

Disk Cleanup is something that should be taken care of at the time it is needed, not "scheduled" to run. That's a "desktop mindset".

WinRT needs to be self-maintaining, self-optimizing, and require less frequent updates. I don't want to have to do "system maintenance" on a device that I use for convenience. Given that Microsoft is in complete control of the hardware (Surface) and operating system (WinRT) there is no reason for various updates to drivers and such.

With desktop Windows, it is perfectly understandable for there to be many updates and fixes... numerous hardware combinations can cause unexpected and unpredictable results. But When Microsoft has a reference platform for which to code to, the amount of churn in OS components is sad.

But I know that this thinking is in the minority here.

 

[link68759]

You have an understandable position, but the only flaw is that *you understand* the system and needlessly fret over it- whereas someone who doesn't know how it works won't fret over it, and it will take care of itself... The only exception is that the user is told to restart it every week or so (although it's very likely that it will restart itself and the user will never know that this happened).

A schedule is not only acceptable, but optimal- better to save on resources instead of having many watchdogs bogging down the system 24/7. I'm sure the ipad also uses schedules... you just a) aren't allowed to see the internals and b) are rarely ever looking at remaining space, because it is hidden and hard to get to. and c) you can't see other performance counters so you would never know something else is running so long as it doesn't lag (any more than usual ).

Driver updates are the power of WinRT though- you have that USB port, you have wireless network devices. You have more power, and with more power comes more drivers. This is just a byproduct of being a more feature filled device than iPad.

 

[kwangso123]

I was curiously low on space for having few apps installed so I went to Disk Cleanup to see what I could get rid of. Apparently nearly 3GB of space was being used to store error message. I don't know what the breakdown was but I'm guessing most were probably display and app crashes. I also found a few hundred MBs for old drivers and software updates. I cleaned out the error messages but kept the old drivers. I was really quite surprised to see how much space was being eaten by error messages. It's something you guys should keep an eye on in case your Surface suddenly loses a lot of HDD space.

Yes...I notice this too....it would be better if Windows RT notifies us when it uses a huge space for error messages, old driver and others; while giving us notification to delete them. So, we won't have to deal with disc cleaner or automatic cleaner at all.