Cealning up WinSxS folder?

winsxs folder isn't as big as it reports.
winsxs is usually only about 500-600mb when you don't count the hardlinked system files.

The scripts I provided do exactly what they claim to do. I have no idea why you're having an issue running dism in normal admin prompt.
You shouldn't... perhaps you're opening cmd prompt in a strange way? I always use winkey+X, then A

resetbase just removes the hotfix uninstall information and makes things permanent.
normal cleanup does the same thing as running cleanmgr and letting it remove windows update information (basically just removes superseded hotfixes)
if you already installed netfx3, why would you try to install it again? When you wash your car, do you wash it again for no reason?

update folder delete just stops the wuauserv service and deletes the softwaredistribution\download folder.
If you aren't sure, don't use it.

 

maybe off topic

well i can't agree with that on windows 7

In my actual Winsxs folder, i have 62545 files and a 6.2 gigs of thoses files

In my previous attempt to clean those files my windows became unresponsive, and mostly the copy pastes functions became unresponsive, had to reinstall everything

I have tried the script and had a multitude of windows opening and closing, could not kill this process with task manager because of those opening and closing windows so fast, could not click anything .....

 

The Components Cleanup and ResetBase via dism only works on Win 8.x .

 

Most people believe the same thing. The reason is that winsxs uses hardlinked files. This means that the file is represented twice on the hard disk, but only takes up one file's worth of space on the drive.
Do you get it? It's the same file, just listed twice.

 

in my case some of the files where represented 4 and 5 times .... but i assure you i had 6.2 gigs in this folder ...

win 8 it was around a gig

win 8.1 around 600 megs

and for the script your right, it was designed for win 8 and up, but could not resist to click it before editing it loll

 

You can reduce the size of the winsxs folder in win7 by running cleanmgr and pointed it at system files.
It will compress superseded updates.

 

most of winsxs are just dupes / backup
so if u gonna run same batch file to remove files do it in all the image / c:\ dir

i never test it deleting all winsxs but installation went fine without most of winsxs files

 

well well well

having a spare computer for tests, a fresh install of win 8.1 update pro WMC gave me this in the winsxs folder

5.73 gigs of 51,314 files,

I ran the Clean-and-ResetBase-WinSxS-Folder.cmd

It dropped to 5.29 gig of 12,419 files, after that the Clean-WinSxS-Folder.cmd did nothing more ???

Very annoying behavior, to lose a mere +/- 10 % of my drive (combined with a 8,49 gigs of hibernate, swap, and the pagefile sys files) I find that hard to swallow

I know hard drives are getting bigger and bigger but .....


EDIT : the clean manager found 2 megs of disposable files ....

 

You might try the wimboot feature if you're strapped for hd space.
You can also powercfg -h off to turn off the hiberfil.sys 2g file

 

Because I was bored, I made up a size analysis of my Winsxs on my current Windows 8.1 x64 Pro w/ WMC install (note: originally Windows 8.0 RTM), using the CSV info from Sysinternals's "du.exe" (Disk Usage) program, counting hard links only once:


Edit:
I think the take-away here is that modern Windows has a LOT of binaries it uses (16327 directories in my Winsxs), and Winsxs is the compatibility layer required to make it so we can all run programs without having to worry about downloading lib Foo first, something you'll find is often the case when you start going outside a select group of programs on Linux. And to remove that compatibility layer would mean death, as your average developer doesn't really think ahead to newer versions of operating systems and the libraries their own program uses.

As for the person who got their Windows 8 64-bit Winsxs below 1GB, I'm skeptical; NetFX by itself is ~300MB. 32-bit Windows 8, maybe.

Edit 2: Whoops, appears there's a handy command to actually do this analysis for you! Now I feel kinda stupid:

Code:

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

Spoiler

Code:

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.3.9600.17029

Image Version: 6.3.9600.16384

[==========================100.0%==========================]

Component Store (WinSxS) information:

Windows Explorer Reported Size of Component Store : 6.62 GB

Actual Size of Component Store : 6.41 GB

    Shared with Windows : 4.85 GB
    Backups and Disabled Features : 1.32 GB
    Cache and Temporary Data : 233.67 MB

Date of Last Cleanup : 2014-04-15 06:23:52

Number of Reclaimable Packages : 2
Component Store Cleanup Recommended : Yes

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