WinSxs Folder consuming enormous disk space

Anonymous
2008-12-24T21:21:38+00:00

My WinSxs folder under Windows directory is consuming 10GB of disk space. We all know that Windows root folder is the system root directory. What is WinSxs? Is there any work around to clear up the free space from this folder? If it keeps building up with this rate, I can see my primary partition being being full very soon. Is there anything that I can do to get back this disk space?

hrishi

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2008-12-25T03:50:29+00:00

Hi Hrishz,

I’ve attached a link below that explains the purpose of the WinSxs folder:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374224.aspx

You can use the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Files Removal Tool which has resulted in some people having more free space in the WinSxs folder. The downside is that after doing this you will be unable to uninstall SP1, you should have SP1 installed anyways so if this isn’t a problem proceed with the steps listed below:

1.       Click Start

2.       In the “Start Search” box type VSP1CLN.exe and then press Enter

3.       In the command prompt that opens type “Y” for yes to perform the clean up

Here is a article about this:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709655.aspx

You can also take a look at another post about this same issue in the forums, link below:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistaperformance/thread/e473cda6-94d5-4e6a-9ce8-97cf876174a0

Hope this helps. : )

If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to ask.

Brian

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-01-09T07:59:02+00:00

    I suspect if you delete this folder it will reclaim most of the space

    "C:\Windows\CheckSur"

    What did "C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CheckSUR.log" say about it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-09T02:17:25+00:00

    Thanks, but no help on WinSxs which increased slightly as before. In fact that Hotfix used up further 95 Meg diskspace for itself and cannot be uninstalled.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-01-05T01:15:21+00:00

    If you want to try another experiment.

    Run the System Update Readiness Tool. This analyses and repairs the WinSxS folder. Then try a scavenge operation.

    http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=504

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-01-04T00:43:54+00:00

    You can force a scavenging operation (to remove unneeded files) by adding or removing a windows feature in Control Panel - Programs and Features.

    Didn't help! In fact Winsxs went up marginally by 0.1 GB (1%). But it seems to do that over time anyway.

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