MS Natural Language and patch KB955020 = 2.4GB wasted disk space

[Deffexor]

Backstory:

Recently I installed Vista x64 Ultimate SP1 (OEM) edition on my new PC. So far, I've generally been impressed with Vista SP1. The only thing that's been killing me is that the OS quickly becomes very "bloated" with stuff.

[Minimalism is a virtue. And plus it makes backups go faster... ]

Part of this is due to Volume Shadow Copies (System Restore, etc.) and this can easily be handled with the "clean-up" function. But part of this is due to Windows "winsxs" (or Windows Side-by-Side) folder, which was Microsoft's answer for "DLL Hell". For those not in the know, Vista apparently keeps a copy of every revision of every DLL (and whatnot) so that individual applications can co-exist without stomping on each others resources. Unfortunately, this is where the "bloat" part comes in.

Problem:

Since Vista is a bit of a resource hog, vLite is naturally a breath of fresh air in keeping one's Vista installation "tight". In particular, the Microsoft Natural Language search function is one of those things that pretty much will never get used by people with even half a brain, yet it hogs up 1GB of disk space. Since it's not really needed, I've elected to remove it with the assistance of vLite.

Here's the funny thing:

Microsoft's patch (KB955020) makes my Vista install increase in size by nearly 2.4GB! (The patch itself is a 60MB dictionary update to add the words "Obama", "Friendster", and a few others...) When I look in the "Winsxs" directory, there are 8 folders each at a size of ~300MB with the names all involving "Microsoft Windows Natural Language"!!!!

As I mentioned, I removed the "Natural Language" feature from my install with vLite, and here it is back again.

So what to do about this?

I've reproduced this problem in a VMWare machine: I've tried both the normal Vista x64 SP1 as well as the vLite'd version (without Natural Language) -- Instead of letting Vista install the whole slew of patches, I installed just this one patch. I don't know if any other patches trigger it, but it's the only one that I've tested so far that does this?

Has anyone else experienced this? Is the solution just to not install this dictionary patch?

[Chrno]

Was this hotfix/update really necessary? I see and have helped people downloading IE updates when they've removed IE with and complains that update(ing) is good for the system (LMAO)

If your using office or whatever it's now called and bundled with Vista why do insist on blaming em for updating this precious update in the first place?

As far as I know: If you keep winsxs, you'll get bloated with updates and "win backup hell". If you remove components with vlite and keep winsxs for "awesome" update reasons, win update will automatically download these "missing" files unless I'm wrong when you update some specific component that' missing (both file/dir wise)

Either you remove winsxs and stay away from win update completely, or either you stay with winsxs and win update and keep complaining on an already failing OS *nods* when another one is coming out really soon. It's your choice a gorwinf winsxs dir or

This update is really that important huh?

Question #1: Do you install every patch that gets released?

[MagicAndre1981]

we know this:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...amp;hl=KB955020

skip the fix!

[Deffexor]

Thanks for the link MagicAndre, that's rather insightful. Guess I'll have to also mark it to never install.

Though I have to say, that's f'ing weird...