Hello, My Winsxs firectory has grown to 7GB large and is sucking up the available space I have allocated to my C:\ drive. Is there anyway to delete the files out of this directory? TommyTommy Rotunno

hi tommy,many users have posted earlier about the increase in size of winsxs folder and below is the explanation From David Shen Based on the research, all the necessary files for specific additions, roles, applications will be contained in the %windir%\Winsxs directory. The %windir%\winsxs folder (also referred to as the component store) is used to store all the installation source files that is needed for Windows Server 2008 to service itself and its optional components, which takes the place of the traditional flat from media. All the shared and private assemblies, manifests, backed up system files, etc, are critical to the operation system of Windows Server 2008 and all of the installed programs. If any of these shared assemblies are removed and you install a program that requires that assembly, the program will simply refuse to run. Here is a blog which describe it in detailed. What is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Windows Vista and why is it so large?http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2008/09/17/what-is-the-winsxs-directory-in-windows-2008-and-windows-vista-and-why-is-it-so-large.aspx If you want to decrease the space that the Winsxs folder takes, you may consider the way which is described in the following Blog. What's winsxs\manifestcache\(something)_blobs.bin?http://blogs.msdn.com/jonwis/archive/2009/01/13/what-s-winsxs-manifestcache-lt-something-gt-blobs-bin.aspx=======================================================Additional infohi there, many users have reported the issue of winsxs folder getting increased in size, this folder is basically a OS folder which you should not modifiy / play around with. OS stores dll refernce files in windows sxs ( side by side ) folder which is very much needed for OS to refer to particular version of dll below is the excellent post explaining the same ( they have explained for windows vista ) but windows sxs folder does same job on all flavour OS . http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/itprovistaannouncements/thread/9411dbaa-69ac-43a1-8915-749670cec8c3/sainath Windows Driver Development

Thanks for the info. It looks like there is no way to shrink that directory which is crazy. Microsoft really dropped the ball here, I have 7GB being taken up by that folder. Tommy Rotunno

Hi Tommy, Vista 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. http://sreekarun.livejournal.com/8015.htmlSreeSomeOne

But I am running Windows Server 2008 64bit not Vista.Tommy Rotunno

hi tommy, did you had a chance to go through my eariler post in which there is detailed info about winsxs and link to reduce the size of winsxs foldersainath Windows Driver Development

Hello Tommy,The thing to remember is this is really your OS. Most of the files in the various Windows folders are really just hard links to the same files you are seeing when looking at winsxs. The files really don't take up space in the winsxs and one of the other folders, it only lives once on the drive. But if you look at the folders individually the numbers appear larger than the total disk space consumedThanks, Darrell Gorter[MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Hi,Sainath and Darrell have provided correct information for you. Generally speaking, we dont need to worry about the size of WinSxS folder. But if you would like to reduce its size, you can try the following tools:The WinSxS folder in Vista and Windows Server 208 has the same function, so you can use the VSP1CLN file to remove some files in WinSxS folder.http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709655.aspx However, correct knowledge of WinSxS folder is important before you take any action. From the "WinSxS directory" section of the following article: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx We can find:"Nearly every file in the WinSxS directory is a hard link to the physical files elsewhere on the systemmeaning that the files are not actually in this directory. For instance in the WinSxS there might be a file called advapi32.dll that takes up >700K however whats being reported is a hard link to the actual file that lives in the Windows\System32, and it will be counted twice (or more) when simply looking at the individual directories from Windows Explorer.""In reality it doesnt actually consume as much disk space as it appears when using the built-in tools (DIR and Explorer) to measure disk space used"Please also refer to the "Where does the disk space go?" section to get more information.Thanks. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi Darrel, Explorer shows that my winsxs directory takes up 7GB of space. If most of that was not real due to hardlinks, then I would expect that the total used space for C: reported by Explorer would be larger than that reported by chkdsk, because it is counting gigabytes of phantom used space in winsxs. However, the numbers match with chkdsk, which leads me to believe that the 7GB number is correct, unless chkdsk itself is being fooled by hardlinks, in which case is there any way to know how much free space is left on my drive? Also, when I subtract the total used space reported by explorer from the size of my partition, it matches the free space reported by Windows on the partition. So, is the 7GB real or not? Thanks.

After much research, I understand that winsxs IS the operating system. However I would like to know whether all the amd* directories can be manually deleted since I have an x86 machine? It seems ridiculous to require us to just live with the system bloat for a processor we don't even have. SSDs are very expensive and would be nice to have for the boot drive, but having this directory constantly growing is just not right. Is there any way we can move it to a secondary drive and have the OS refer to it there?

Hello, I have gone through so many post regarding this. I found only one solution, that is: install service pack 1 or 2, and run the "compcln.exe" or what so ever! Now, I should say the only one solution i found is not the "solution". My winsxs folder is 3.89GB, and I want to reduce it, so I install services pack that require more than 5GB space!! after installation it can take 5+3.89=8.89GB, lets say I run the cmd.. will it reduced into 2GB? where as the pck itself need 5GB!! who knows how much it can reduce?? I better not install the pck 1 or 2...!! what is the use of installing the pck in this case? wasting time! I think, Microsoft engineers need to comes up with some tool that can reduce it!! Thank you

Hello, What OS are referring to and what is the size of your volume that the OS is installed to? What are you using to determine the size of folder and is it Hard-link aware? Can you try the Disk Usage tool from the sysinternals site? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545046.aspx drop into a \tools folder C:\Tools>du /v /u c:\Windows >Win_Folders.txt Thanks, Darrell Gorter [MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. VAMT - Volume Activation Management Tool - Download link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ec7156d2-2864-49ee-bfcb-777b898ad582&displaylang=en

Hello, Can you try the Disk Usage tool from the sysinternals site? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545046.aspx drop into a \tools folder C:\Tools>du /v /u c:\Windows >Win_Folders.txt Make this available so we can look at what is consuming spaceThanks, Darrell Gorter [MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. VAMT - Volume Activation Management Tool - Download link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ec7156d2-2864-49ee-bfcb-777b898ad582&displaylang=en

I believe people are saying over and over what's big, and MS engineers should really take it seriously. WINSXS folders are taking large amount of space - way more than OS itself! I cannot believe what sort of engineers won't take this seriously, especialy ones who work on something which is supposed to be an "Enterprise Software". Is this the reason why MS OS is loosing the market share, and people are being more and more frustrated by Windows team? Installing windows takes ~4GB. Works perfectly fine initially. Than it start srawling, until it becomes useless. WinSXS folder now 7GB, entire Windows 11GB. Any reason for this? Any reason not to reduce the size, or optimize its usage? Imagine this when you multpiple it by 10, 20, 100 Servers? How much storage would you waist? How big your Windows OS disk needs to be to accomodate for an enteprize applicatino over few years of its production life-cycle? C'mon MS guys, I believe you're good engineers, I still believe in you and you can do it better - fix this thing, and don't just tell us by more storage, or faster machines. It won't work.

I have Windows 2008 Server SP2. Other than the operating system, I have 3 or four application installed that are less than 7 GB. The total space allocated to the C drive is 65GB. Now I only have 1.6 GB free and I am running into space problems. the WINSXS file is about 20 GB and growing. This cannot be right. How do I stop losing space?

Microsoft needs to address this officially - not in forums. Is there a Microsoft document that addresses this? I have a lot of servers that are virtualized, taking up space on the SAN. All of these virtual servers are wasting disk. Either the reporting tools in the operating system are wrong, or the disk space is really tied up, but my monitoring systems think the disks are getting full, and as far as copying files, or installing patches go, the disk is seen as being full. I don't want to allocate a bunch of space on the SAN for this retarded misuse of disk. I generally create my Windows 2008 r2 virtual servers with a 25GB system volume, and that should be plenty. How it's filled up varies greatly among my servers, depending on what's installed. This is a bad one. It's an application server in a Sharepoint 2010 farm. Here's the DU output, first on c:\windows, then on c:\. Is Microsoft telling me that I don't need to worry about this drive reporting that it only has 300M free now because these are duplicate files? 11,989,370 c:\windows\winsxs 22,389,288 c:\windows Totals: Files: 88149 Directories: 21478 Size: 22,926,631,423 bytes Size on disk: 23,216,680,960 bytes 11,989,370 c:\Windows\winsxs 22,392,247 c:\Windows 24,460,789 c:\ Totals: Files: 104420 Directories: 24074 Size: 25,047,848,628 bytes Size on disk: 25,271,861,312 bytes Tommy

Same problem at our company. I don't see any difference in using treesize program or DU tool like suggeted above. TreeSize Professional Report, 21/02/2012 11:51 Drive: c$ on 'server' (Y:) Drive: Y:\ Size: 15.351,1 MB Used: 12.275,9 MB Free: 3.075,2 MB 4096 Bytes per Cluster (NTFS) Full Path Size Allocated Files Folders % of Parent Last Change Last Access Y:\ 12.993,4 MB 13.145,7 MB 84.978 15.747 100,0 % 21/02/2012 21/02/2012 Y:\Windows 11.526,7 MB 11.657,1 MB 68.106 11.640 88,7 % 21/02/2012 21/02/2012 Y:\Windows\winsxs 5.892,5 MB 5.958,1 MB 34.151 8.762 51,1 % 15/02/2012 21/10/2011 Y:\Windows\System32 3.847,1 MB 3.900,5 MB 26.742 1.525 33,5 % 21/02/2012 21/02/2012 output du /v /u c:\Windows below ... 21 c:\windows\winsxs\x86_xrxscan.inf.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6001.18000_en-us_ef6ff684af922a40 6.033.955 c:\windows\winsxs 11.803.350 c:\windows Totals: Files: 68106 Directories: 11639 Size: 12.086.630.774 bytes Size on disk: 12.332.617.728 bytes Winsxs is 6GB large and I don't see any readon why ! It couldn't be that hard to make a good OS without draging all the file history with us from the installbase !? du /v /u c:\Windows

I also stumbled over this winsxs and disk space problem. MS states in their system requirements for W8K that minimum disk space is 10GB. I think they should update their document because this is only for installing W8K not running it and keeping it updated. If you want to keep your system up-to-date then the 10GB isn't minimum but its 20-30-40 GB? We have internal CA running on W8K and ignorant as I was I installed it on 15GB partition because there wasn't any other application planned on this server. And now after a couple years I have some 700MB free and I must start planning for disk expansion(luckily its virual machine and we have partiton management tool for that). And MS really don't mention that W8K installation is supposed to grow that much and you should plan according your server installation according to this because there is no way to delete old updates and reduce the size of windows installation.

du /v /u c:\Windows >Win_Folders.txt The value in Win_Folders.txt for C:\Windows\Winsx is only for the files that are directly in that folder. It does not include files in the subfolders. To get the total of all of the files in C:\Windows\Winsxs you need to use: du /v /u c:\Windows\Winsxs Which will provide you with a sum of all of the space used as the last line of output. http://www.saberman.com

Time does not stop, and I am still looking for a solution about this issue. We have 30+ Windows 2008 R2 servers. We have 50GB disks for System drive and winsxs is using at least 20% of it!!! I read a lot about winsxs and no one knows for sure how to eliminate it or at least make it smaller. Come on Microsoft, give us a solution for this. SAN disks are too expensive to be wasted for something we dont really need!Diego de Azevedo IT Analyst - MCSE, MCITP

Time does not stop, and I am still looking for a solution about this issue. We have 30+ Windows 2008 R2 servers. We have 50GB disks for System drive and winsxs is using at least 20% of it!!! I read a lot about winsxs and no one knows for sure how to eliminate it or at least make it smaller. Come on Microsoft, give us a solution for this. SAN disks are too expensive to be wasted for something we dont really need! Diego de Azevedo IT Analyst - MCSE, MCITP If Service Pack is installed on 2008 R2 Servers, you can use following command to free up some space dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded [use elevated cmd (run as Administrator)] Also, please refer following discussion Dism command in windows 2008 SP2 http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservergen/thread/75b7edb0-4bb2-4337-af23-85e3ff179d92A UNIVERSE without WINDOWS is CHAOS ! This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees and confers no rights. About Me ?