WinSxs Folder consuming enormous disk space

I think it's backing up the dll's of viruses, also, such as the rouge.security virus that nailed me within 5 minutes of trying the IE9 download.

Helped a little a first. Now, my drive is full again. I'm unemployed, but was making a few bucks doing videos, sound effects and free-lance writing. Can't do it anymore. Can't afford HDD drive or newer computer. Losing house. Thanks M$ for making a product that only serves itself. Send me contact info for your legal department. I still have the original advertised requirements for Vista...

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

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I cant find any VSP1CLN.exe on my vista sp2 64-bit machine, what should I do, microsoft?

Hi,

I found one solution for "how to reduce the size of Winsxs folder".

Solution: Go to command prompt->then go to->C:\Windows\System32->then type->DISM /online /Cleanup-image /SpSuperseded. This will show you how to run the Windows 7 SP1 cleanup tool to permanently remove the backed up files created during the installation of the Windows 7 SP1 to gain back more hard drive space.

Thanks,

Partha