Windows 8 is taking up a lot of my hard drive

My 60 GB C: drive ran out of room. The only thing installed on it is Windows 8 and whatever pre-installed programs came with my computer. I ran WinDirStat (WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics), a directory statistic tool and found two very large folders: C:/Windows is 22.2 GB and C:/ProgramData/Microsoft is 17.2 GB. This doesn't seem right. Can I free up room in these or are they both necessary? I read that windows 8 should take up around 20 GB, not 40 so how might I got about freeing up some space?
Also, I updated from Windows 7 about two months ago.
Thanks in advance.

Hello Jeff, and welcome to Eight Forums.

Since you upgraded from Windows 7, double check to see if you may have a C:\Windows.old folder. This will be a copy of your previous Windows 7 installation.

If you do not have anything you want to copy back from it first, then it's safe to delete the Windows.old folder.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2527-windows-old-folder-delete-windows-8-a.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I appreciate it but Windows.old is long gone. I didn't realize some of those live tiles take up so much space. I deleted the ones I don't use and I'm back up to a little over a gig free now. It would be nice to have a little more breathing room though.

Take a look at my answer to this thread to see if it applies to your case then we'll dig a little further.
http://www.eightforums.com/general-support/20778-windows-8-config-files-taking-up-24gb-2.html

This is what happened:

I checked the C:\Windows\System32\config folder and it is right around 300 MB which seems normal.
Then I downloaded and ran the Temporary File Cleaner, http://oldtimer.geekstogo.com/TFC.exe and this freed up a little over 1 GB.
Then, Win+X ->Run->cleanmgr then click on Clean up system files. This freed up ~300 MB.
Ran CCleaner, freed up ~400 mb.

Then I restarted the computer, Windows installed some updates, and my C: drive had 18.4 GB free. After rereading this post and checking for spelling mistakes, I rechecked my C: drive and it now has 18.7 GB. I feel if I look again it will be anywhere between completely full and completely empty. I'll run WinDirStat again later and see what has changed.
Thanks for your help!

If your C:\Windows ~ 20GB then it is about right
If Your C:\ProgramData ~ 17GB then there is something wrong here. My C:\ProgramData is ~ 3.6GB

It's better but I don't know if its right. My C: drive now has 15.7 GB free and I haven't installed anything since I reported it having 18.7 GB a couple days ago.

The screenshot does not help unless you expand the node <Files> to see what in there. 2nd, I notice that you have a folder inetpub, did you install IIS to host a website ?

1. Get rid of the hiberfile. The command is powercfg -h off
2. Reduce the pagefile to 1GB

That should save you a bundle.

Also check your shadowstorage. The command is vssadmin list shadowstorage

Cool, thank you!