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Author Topic: Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder  (Read 19032 times)

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Offline Willy2

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Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder
« on: March 09, 2013, 09:46:27 am »
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Offline Shane

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Re: Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2013, 01:01:12 pm »
My Windows 7 winsxs folder is 7.30 GB. I ran the command

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

And the size didnt change at all. But of course SP1 was already part of Windows when I installed, so no service pack files to remove.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2008/09/17/what-is-the-winsxs-directory-in-windows-2008-and-windows-vista-and-why-is-it-so-large.aspx

I know that you mess with the winsxs folder manually your system will crash and not come back. Only removing old things like service packs is what you can do.

Quote
The only way to safely reduce the size of the WinSxS folder is to reduce the set of possible actions that the system can take – the easiest way to do that is to remove the packages that installed the components in the first place.  This can be done by uninstalling superseded versions of packages that are on your system.  Service Pack 1 contains a binary called VSP1CLN.EXE, a tool that will make the Service Pack package permanent (not removable) on your system,  and remove the RTM versions of all superseded components.  This can only be done because by making the Service Pack permanent we can guarantee that we won’t ever need the RTM versions.

So yes, the WinSXS folder is very large, and it will continue to grow as the OS ages.  I hope that this clears up some of the questions about why that is, and what you can do about it. Note that the Windows servicing structure and the layout of the store is subject to change.

Shane
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Offline Willy2

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Re: Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2013, 04:32:54 pm »
Agree. One should be EXTREMELY careful with the "Winsxs" folder. When in doubt don't mess with it.
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Offline Shane

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Re: Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2013, 11:42:48 am »
I also find that it is the Winsxs folder that has problems with SFC.

When people post that the system file checker failed they send me their logs. When I read the log it says that the file it wants to restore needs to be restore from a file in winsxs but the file in winsxs is corrupt as well.

Which I dont think it is, Windows has to know how to tell if a file is corrupt or not, s hash or something, which means there has to be a list somewhere on the system. If I could find this list that points to the winsxs folder I might be able to see if it could be rebuilt, and thus fix SFC :-)

Shane
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Offline Willy2

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Re: Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2013, 07:09:18 am »
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Offline Shane

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Re: Reduce the sze of the Winsxs folder
« Reply #5 on: March 15, 2013, 06:24:01 pm »
Dont see anything about where MS looks to know if a file is corrupt or not.

There has to be a way for Windows and the SFC to know if a file is corrupt or good. I just dont know where it keeps it.

Shane
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