How to Save Space By Cleaning Windows' Win. Sx. S Folder. Windows uses a system folder called Win. Sx. S to store files that are needed for your Windows installation, as well as backups or updates to those files. It's a space hog, however, taking up several gigabytes of space and growing with each Windows Update you perform. Use the steps below to clean up unnecessary files in that Win. Sx. S folder and reclaim valuable hard drive space. You can't just delete everything in the Win. Sx. S folder, because some of those files are needed for Windows to run and update reliably. However, with Windows 7 and above you can use the built- in Disk Cleanup tool to delete older versions of Windows updates you no longer need. With Windows 8. 1 and Windows 1. Command Prompt to clean up the Win. Sx. S folder as well. Use Disk Cleanup to Delete Old Updates From the Sx. S Folder. 1. Open the Disk Cleanup tool. You can do this by typing . Check the box next to . Click OK. Note that if you don't see the Windows Update Cleanup option in Disk Cleanup, that means there aren't any files that can be safely deleted. Use the Command Prompt to Clean Up the Sx. S Folder. If you want a more thorough view of how much space the Sx. S folder is taking up and the option to clean up unneeded files, use the Command Prompt. Launch the command prompt with admin priviledges. You can do this by right- clicking on the Windows icon in the taskbar and click . Enter the command: Dism. Cleanup- Image /Start. Component. Cleanup. It could take a few minutes for the DISM tool to analyze the folder. When it's done, you'll see size details of the components in the Win. Sx. S folder and, at the bottom, a recommendation to clean it up or not. If recommended, clean up the folder using this command in the Command Prompt: Dism. Cleanup- Image /Start. Component. Cleanup. There's another command you can use to uninstall Windows updates and service packs, which saves more space, but we don't recommend you do that, because you won't be able to uninstall any current service updates or service packs after performing this. The command is Dism. WinSXS folder is the component store of Windows vista and later operating systems. Windows OS stores all its core components to WinSXS directory. Thanks pyrocam for all this! Unfortunately, didn’t seem to work for me. I noticed you seemed more emphatic in previous post regarding: “$patchcache$ and WinSXS. Side-by-side technology is a standard for executable files in Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows 2000, and later versions of Windows that attempts to alleviate. In last week's TR Dojo Challenge question, I asked TechRepublic members how do you safely reduce the size of the WinSxS folder. Before we get to the solution, let's. Every day millions of Windows machines are booted up and everyday millions of people sit idly by waiting for Windows to load onto the desktop. The amount o. Hi Matt, Winsxs in Vista takes up much more than 400MB. This is due to the 8,10,16 or more different backup versions of each of thousands of files kept in winsxs. Version 3.74 Released on 25 August 2012. These are the changes to Sandboxie since version 3.72. New Getting Started short tutorial appears on first use. Wondering if there is away for default desktop icons to be created in windows 7. In XP usually just edit the all users folder, as my business does a lot of work. WinDirStat provides a navigation and visualization system to help you get the data you need to optimize your storage utilization.ProsAppealing visualizer: The. Cleanup- Image /Start. Component. Cleanup. The cleanup might take some time, depending on your system and how much you're deleting, but that extra space will be worth it. Reduce the size of the Win. Sx. S folder with vsp. In last week's TR Dojo Challenge question, I asked Tech. Republic members how do you safely reduce the size of the Win. Sx. S folder. Before we get to the solution, let's get a little background on the Windows Side- by- side (Win. Sx. S) folder. Understanding Windows Side- by- side assemblies and the Win. Sx. S folder. In an effort to combat the dynamically linked library (DLL) problems that plagued Windows 9x, Microsoft introduced the concept of Side- by- side (Sx. S) assemblies in Windows XP. DLL hell, as these problems were often referred to, occurred when multiple applications (let's say App. DLL file. 1 updated the . DLL file to a new version, but App. App. 2 might no longer work. LOCAL isolation and Win. Sx. S in Windows XPPrior to Windows XP (but also supported by XP), developers could use a process called . LOCAL isolation to prevent DLL conflicts. In a nut shell, . LOCAL isolation meant that applications would first look in the application directory for all the associated . DLL, . OCX, and . EXE files. If Windows didn't find the required file in the application directory, it would look for the file in other locations, such as the System. First, installing multiple copies of the same shared . DLL file wastes disk space. Second, if a security vulnerability was discovered in a specific . DLL file, you would need to update every copy of that file, instead of just a single shared file. Windows Side- by- side was designed to address these problems. When Windows XP was released, many developers were still supporting applications that had to run on previous Windows versions. It took several years, and the proliferation of Windows XP, for most developers to embrace the new methodology. On Windows XP machines, the Win. Sx. S folder is only created if the user installs an application that uses it. Win. Sx. S in Windows Vista and beyond. With the release of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2. Windows 7, Microsoft significantly expanded the role of the Win. Sx. S folder. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to provide two different descriptions of the Win. Sx. S folder. In a September 1. Microsoft's Ask the Core Team Tech. Net blog, Joseph Conway, Senior Support Escalation Engineer, described the Win. Sx. S folder thusly. For instance in the Win. Sx. S there might be a file called advapi. K however what's being reported is a hard link to the actual file that lives in the Windows\System. Windows Explorer. According to Beck. But in reality it doesn't actually consume as much disk space as it appears when using the built- in tools (DIR and Explorer) to measure disk space used. Conway asserts that the Win. Sx. S folder is THE storage location for the files that Explorer reports it contains, which are then projected onto other locations. Beck seems to describe the Win. Sx. S folder as containing mostly links (which Explorer treats as files) to physical files that actually exist in other directories. Luckily, this dichotomy has no impact on our efforts to reduce the size of the Win. Sx. S folder. Reducing the size of Win. Sx. SRegardless of whether the Win. Sx. S directory is the physical repository for the actual component files or a collection of hard links to files stored across the drive, manually deleting files from this folder is a bad idea. Doing so could prevent applications from running and make the system unstable. So how do we reduce the size of the Win. Sx. S folder—either as perceived by Explore or in actuality? There are three ways: Uninstall applications (possible)Use the vsp. Windows Vista SP1. Use the compcln. exe tool after installing Windows Vista SP2. Uninstalling applications. Of the three methods I describe, I am least certain that this one will work. According to posts on Microsoft forums and around the Web, Windows Vista and later versions contain a . However, I have read just as many reports of the Win. Sx. S folder remaining the same size even after users uninstalled applications or components. You'll just have to take your chances with this method. Use vsp. 1cln. exe to clean up after Windows Vista SP1. One method that does seem to work is removing the redundant files left over after installing Windows Vista SP1. Thankfully, Microsoft provides the Windows Vista SP1 Files Removal Tool (vsp. The tool is automatically installed as part of the SP1 upgrade, and you can find it at \%windir%\system. I describe how to use the vsp. TR Dojo video, . Just make sure you're sticking with SP1 before running the tool, as you can't remove SP1 afterwards. Use compcln. exe to clean up after Windows SP2. Just like cleaning up after SP1, you can use the Service Pack Clean- up tool (compcln. Windows Vista SP2. Compcln. exe is an improved version of the earlier vsp. It is installed as part of the SP2 upgrade, and you'll find it at \%windir%\system. As with vsp. 1cln. SP2. And the Tech. Republic swag goes to.. This week's coffee mugs and laptop stickers to richardqt, who was first to mentioned vsp. Great. Zen, who provided an excellent description of the Win. Sx. S folder, links to several relevant articles, and mentioned compcln. Thanks to everyone who submitted an answer. If you don't see your answer here, be sure to give this week's question.
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