Uninstall and install grows the reported size of the application

Question

I've written an installer in WiX; and it works very well. However, I've having a minor issue where the "reported" size of the installer seems to be growing with each subsequent installation.

Steps

1. Install application
2. Goto 'Control Panel' select 'Program and Features', find application and look at Size.
3. Uninstall applicaiton
4. Install applicaiton
5. Go back to 'Control Panel', select 'Program and Features', find applicaiton and look at Size again (it's grown roughly by the size of the installer).

Does anyone have any ideas how I stop the growth between installs? Or if this is by design?

Answer 1

Do your components have Permanent set to "yes"? These components are preserved even after uninstall. Look also for RemoveOnuninstall attributes.

Each program may or may not provide its own size information to Windows. WiX based programs typically do not and let Windows guess. (Search for ARPSIZE in your project to learn whether you do.) Consequently, Windows does not necessarily notice all of the files, but typically all the size reported is actually taken and worth researching via the file system. It may include files generated by your program somewhere under Program Files.

This size does not include space taken by the Windows Installer Cache. This is good to know about, too, as it is often as big as the installed software itself. The MSI is cached primarily to support easier uninstallation.

For a one-time cleanup of program related disk space you can use the Windows Cleanup utility.