Windows folder may containt 500'000 files or more

This week, I found that C:\Windows contains ~500'000 files and ~200'000 folders. I'm running Win10 for ~1.5 years and this is a little too many of files created IMHO. So I decided to have a glimpse on what is typical for the freshly installed OS.

For my experiments, I was installing several OSes in VirtualBox. Immediately after the end of the installation process, I was checking how many files and folders were created in total.

 OSes:

• 3.11: Windows 3.11
• 98: Windows 98 SE
• XP: Windows XP SP3 32x
• 7: Windows 7 Max 32x
• 10: Windows 10 Enterprise 64x
• Linux: Kubuntu 22.04 LTS 64x

I measured Files (total number of files), Folders (total number of folders created), Space (size for folders and files), Memory (RAM memory footprint), Files/Folder and Space/File values.

Conclusions

• To my surprise, Linux has many files and folders. While occupied space and memory consumption are not the highest ones.
• Files/Folder and Space/File values are lower than I was expecting.

Moreover, I measured the Installation time and Launch time upon restart. The timer was stopped when the interface was becoming responsive. E.g., it was possible to press the Start button and to see the menu unfolding. Just of note, my laptop is rather old one (Lenovo T420, 2520M/6 Gb/320 Gb, 2244 points at CPUmark).

* Installation time for Windows 3.11 and Windows 98 excludes time needed to prepare the formatted disk partition. As soon as installer is not capable of doing it, I did it with 3rd parties tools.

Conclusions

• Windows XP is really fast in the VirtualBox environment.
• It takes longer to install Windows 7, but then it runs faster than Windows 10.