My winsxs is killing me!

[Jones B]

Hey everybody!

As the title lists my winsxs folder is killing me. Ive been reading about it, and understand that it cant be deleted.

But now its reached the massive size of 17(!) GB thats pretty much when my computer only got 70 GB of memory.

I would like to know if theres any way of reducing the folder size?

 

[kesume]

Hi welcome to the forum,


You may find the information in the following link of interest:-
Question about winSxS size

 

[derekimo]

Welcome to the forum,

Here's some interesting reading on that, What is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Windows Vista and why is it so large? - Ask the Core Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

[richc46]

Welcome
Bottom line leave it alone. Winsxs is shorthand for side by side. Basically what that means is that winsxs it used by more than one program. You can delete some of the items in winsxs because you do not use a program, only to find out that another program is affected.
If you want to regain space on you hardrive, winsxs is not the answer. Download and use windirstat. It will show you in great detail what is on your hard drive. After you anzalye it you can delete anything that you do not need or have forgotten about.
You should also use ccleaner, it will free a lot of spcace just by cleaning old files and temporary files that just take up room. If you use ccleaner, do not check cookies or system temporary files or any boxes in registry. Registry changes can cause problems. In addition the other two boxes will remove cookies that remember your ID at login or your special pages. This is not a problem as you can log in again and you will get a new cookie, but its a pain. Good Luck
I think that this information and the information by Kesume and Derekimo, should tell you everything you need to know about winsxs and regaining space on the HD.

 

[pacinitaly]

Leave it alone. Get a 500GB HDD.

 

[ilikefree]

If you use CCleaner you can go to the cookies page and send cookies you want to keep to the right side box. They won't be deleted when you clear cookies if they are in that right side box.