WinSxs Folder consuming enormous disk space

Anonymous

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

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Anonymous

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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43 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-01-01T12:05:47+00:00

Why not delete the whole of WinSxs to free up space, if the residue is uninstalled or solely for roll-back (like the $Uninstall$KB.. folders of XP which can removed once you are confident of the updates)? Any doubly hard-linked files in System32 will not be removed; only files where the last hard-link has gone will be deleted.

Has anyone tried this on a PC where they are prepared to reinstall the OS?

Ermmm... you're not paying attention, Xray ;-)

You can't delete the files - unless maybe you boot the computer from a separate hard dive, probably a *nix distro live disc - those files are protected.

Anyway I'd be willing to bet that Windows wouldn't run if you did delete them. Odd though MS are, when they lock files it's usually (though not always!) for a fairly good reason.
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Anonymous

2013-01-01T12:35:35+00:00

I have 4 files loaded from WinSxS.

Common Controls 6 and 5.8 used by 22 programs, Visual C 8 Runtime used by one program, and GDIPlus.dll used by 4 programs incl IE and Explorer.

Click Start - All Programs - Accessories- Run and type

msinfo32

Then go to the Software Environment - Loaded Modules and sort on Path. Scroll to the path containing WinSxS.

To see which program is using a module.

Click Start - All Programs - Accessories - Right click Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. Type

tasklist /m /fi "Modules eq gdiplus.dll"

Replacing gdiplus.dll with the module you are looking for.
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Anonymous

2013-01-01T12:44:28+00:00

Ermmm... you're not paying attention, Xray ;-)

To what, pray?
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Anonymous

2013-01-01T20:08:52+00:00

Holy **** a lot of you are ungrateful shits.. You're lucky you even have a computer and that Microsoft are even producing them. Instead of moaning and complaining at the people who make your life easier, get outside and do something productive to vent off your anger. It shouldn't take a 15 year old to realise that..

Sorry Xray, it was aimed at you.
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