Try a Linux install of something lightweight like mint/xfce to eliminate OS bloat.

Steam has a built in compatibility layer you can manage from your library page, so if your laptop could run a game on windows it should easily run it on mint with the spared resources and you’ll have all that spare space from ditching windows crap.

Ram and (ssd) storage are two different things. Also, both of those numbers, 8 gb of ram and 256 gb of disk space, are pretty low these days.

Anyway, if you’re using the laptop with the software it came with, it might have a bunch of demo versions of useless apps put on for advertisement purposes. HP is (or at least used to be) notorious for this crap. Somewhere in the settings should be a page for apps that lists what’s installed, check there.

Why do you need "to get it to at least 200”?

Look up WizTree for a quick way to see/fix what’s taking up your space.

A very silly but useful hack I did to get the MS flight sim install down to about 40GB (normally ~270GB) before I gave up on windows was this.

Set up a nextcloud server on a raspberry pi.

Install the client on your windows machine.

Add your games install folder as a connection on the nextcloud client and enable VFS (virtual filesystem)

Once synced, right click the folder and select “free up space…”

This will basically delete the file data from your local machine and redownload it whenever windows tries to access a file.

Now launch your game and it’ll take a while to start as it has to redownload the files it actually needs to run, but it won’t bother getting it doesn’t have to.

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I recommend swapping in a new SSD . Use something like clonezilla to mirror the SSD from the old one to the new.

Also see whether you can bump the RAM in that box: laptops often have a LOT of junk that starts on boot that just seems to eat RAM, not the least of which is Windows itself. Adding RAM will have the most immediate effect once you’ve found the space to install things.

Probably just a lot of bloatware. When I’ve been in this situation in the past, I did a completely fresh install of windows. Much smaller. Linux can free up even more space.

There really isn’t anything necessary from HP, but it also depends a lot on your comfort working with the computer so ymmv. I don’t know what’s gonna happen if 3 months down the line you need to call customer support for something. If it were me, I’d be thinking “worst case scenario I can just factory reset”, especially if I had everything important backed up somewhere.

You can get a terabyte SSD for like $50 these days. It might be worth it to just upgrade.

Reinstall Windows and then debloat it. Here’s a guide from AtlasOS. I recommend it to all my friends who have just bought a new laptop. I have no complaints from them. Windows Updates, Defender, Microsoft Store work as expected.

Chances are good you could get a new larger ssd installed, right off the bat you won’t get the full amount of storage advertised, windows 11 takes up around 18 gb. I don’t know how much junk HP loads however. 250gb doesn’t really give much room anymore, unless it’s for productivity.

wipe everything- HP is the worst possible company for preinstalled data mining bloatware. reinstall Tiny11 to further reduce Microsoft’s bloat. Then consider getting a 1tb portable SSD, most of them are plenty fast enough to support having games installed.

linux

1: hp laptops are easy to work on - one back panel and everything is accessible. Some screws are under the rubber feet 2: m.2 ssd is your storage, most likely a 2280 nvme, which is almost all of them. Open the laptop and measure the length of the ssd to confirm. They come in 80, 40, and 30mm lengths (2280, 2240, 2230). Get a 1TB minimum. 3: Upgrade that 8gb ram to 32gb (2x16gb). Assuming this is a clearance laptop with ddr4, that 8gb it has now is not enough for Win11 and daily use - Windows takes up to 5GB on its own, the remaining 3 will be eaten by a browser tab in chrome or firefox. In addition, your onboard graphics can eat up to 2GB of RAM as well, so you’re strangled by that small RAM amount no matter what. Don’t be shy about slamming more than you need - it’s future proofing. 4: look up your hp model on their website and get the service manual. It shows you how to rebuild the laptop from the frame up. Use this to figure out how to unbolt the back panel. 5: While you’re there, look at the specs - what kind of ram, how much it accepts, and what ssd it has.

Lots of people commenting about the laptop here, so let me offer something different. What’s that one game you downloaded? Because if it is Ark: Survival Evolved (or Ascended) then still having 80G left is pretty good!

hp is notorious for pre installing apps that you dont need, it’s called bloatware. you can maybe remove some of those.