[VCL-1013] Modernize parts of Windows code

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.5
• Component/s: vcld (backend)
• Assignee: Andrew Kurth
• Reporter: Andrew Kurth
• Created: 03/Feb/17 16:25
• Updated: 18/May/17 20:48
• Resolved: 30/Mar/17 22:38

Description

The Windows code does several cleanup actions during pre_capture. Some of them are a bit crude and could cause problems with things such as Windows Update. For example, the following are being deleted:

• C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles*
• C:\SoftwareDistribution\Download*

It would be better to let dism.exe and cleanmgr.exe handle all of the cleanup unless there are files known to be 100% safe to delete.

The cleanmgr.exe code has hard-coded registry entries for items to clean up. These represent the checkboxes you see when you run Disk Cleanup. The options vary based on version and which features are installed. There are options for Windows 8 and later not being used. This should be updated.

There are other details which should be removed:

• Defragment hard drive - I see no real advantage for this anymore. It's detrimental for some VM images if the image is stored thin. Under VMware/thin, if a file is created and deleted or moved to an empty location, the original space isn't reclaimed without special operations (sdelete/punchzero). Bare metal use of VCL is rare these days and I don't see much of a benefit regardless.