5 Replies Latest reply: Jan 2, 2011 7:58 AM by SeaConch RSS

    Unused language files

    bonalymac999 Community Member

      I just indentified over 20,000 files that Adobe installs (CS3, Lightroom,Elements & Premiere Elements) for various languages

       

      This gives me the following drawbacks

       

      • occupes disks space
      • slows down virus scans
      • slows down malware scans
      • slows down back-ups
      • slows down my disk imaging
      • increases disk wear and tear
      • clogs up the system so that indexing screen refreshes etc takes longer
      • lots of small size files have significantly more impact on speed etc than large files.

       

      I only use English, I will NEVER install any other language. Can I not delete these files (they should not have been installed in the first place, but I'm assuming Adobe will not change this).

       

      I did see one previous question on this but it was unanswered.

       

      The sheer scale (something approaching 20% of the total files on my PC) are occupied by what appears to be completely un-necessary files.

       

      Anyone got any opinions on this?

       

       

      Colin

        • 1. Re: Unused language files
          John Joslin Community Member

          Try it and see!


          Where are these 20,000 files?

          • 2. Re: Unused language files
            bonalymac999 Community Member

            I have done!!!

             

            So far so good

             

            I started by discovering that there were thousnds of html files in my Adobe directory.

             

            So I searched fro them and found that many of them were in folders whose names started with for example es_ES or fr_FR. They were in lots of different places, but by searching for the various start letters, I identified all the un-used languge directories.

             

            I use UK English and there were many UK & US english directories, but I did not risk deleting any US ones as many parts of the install only offer US english.

             

             

            Colin

            • 3. Re: Unused language files
              Mylenium CommunityMVP

              He's referring to the various EULA and otehr license agreement files as wel las a number of language packs for shared components. generally those can be deleted without impairing functionality, if one never uses a differnt language, but naturally, upon uninstall you may get warnings that some components could not be removed.

               

              Mylenium

              • 4. Re: Unused language files
                John Joslin Community Member

                I thought of the EULAs but that wouldn't account for 20 000 files!

                • 5. Re: Unused language files
                  SeaConch Community Member

                  What I find totally inexplicable and incredible is that Adobe does not seem to be capable of cleaning-up its own installation files and directories, especially the directories containing language dependent data. As stated a huge percentage of my disks are filled with language junk. I did try cleaning this up once, but discovered that some automatic uodates no longer ran properly. The directories filled with the language junk are: /amt /Legal / OBLRes / Eula /Locale and /Resources.

                  Adobe should be forced to provide a Language_Clean_Up_Utility where you specify the Languages you wis to retain. The utility would then remove the rest of the junk language files in such a way so that updates work correctly. The utility should also clean-up the extraneous Registry entries at the same time.

                  Adobe really needs to get its act together.