On one laptop installation of Windows 7 Ultimate the WinSxS folder has grown from less than 1GB initially to 5GB now. The whole system size is 7.5GB. The only software installed are MS Office 2007, Acronis TrueImage Home 2010, MS Expression Web, and utilities as Avira, CCleaner, Foxit Reader, Firefox. It is of concern because the drive is an expensive 32GB SSD with very limited space. Can this folder be deleted? Or, we'd have to go back to Windows XP on this unit. Investing in a bigger SSD is not an option at this time. Jyanendra ------------

Look at the links in the "Related Topics" section to the right of this post. I have had Windows 7 Ultimate installed since January and my WinSxS folder is 7 GB. It represents over half of the space under c:\Windows. -Noel

Can this folder be deleted? Never do this. Most files in this folder are no real folders, they are hardlinks [1] which are mapped to the destionation folders like C:\Windows\system32 or C:\Program files. Read more about it here: 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 This applies to Windows 7 too. André"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Thanks for the responses. It seems we shall indeed have to go back to Windows XP Pro on this particular unit. Purchasing a bigger SSD is not an available option at this moment. We shall be saving the image on an external drive so that we could come back to Windows 7 when a larger hard drive is available. Regards and thanks again. Jyanendra -------------

i found that you can run this command if you have SP1 installed and want to reduce (not remove) the size of this folder significantly. open an elevated DOS prompt and run: DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

More info on the DISM /Online command below... What does the /SpSuperseded switch do? C:\TEMP>dism /online /? Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 6.1.7600.16385 Image Version: 6.1.7600.16385 The following commands may be used to service the image: WINDOWS EDITION SERVICING COMMANDS: /Set-ProductKey - Populates the product key into the offline image. /Get-TargetEditions - Displays a list of Windows editions that an image can be upgraded to. /Get-CurrentEdition - Displays the editions of the specified image. /Set-Edition - Upgrades the Windows image to a higher edition. UNATTEND SERVICING COMMANDS: /Apply-Unattend - Applies an unattend file to an image. DRIVER SERVICING COMMANDS: /Remove-Driver - Removes driver packages from an offline image. /Add-Driver - Adds driver packages to an offline image. /Get-DriverInfo - Displays information about a specific driver in an offline image or a running operating system. /Get-Drivers - Displays information about all drivers in an offline image or a running operating system. INTERNATIONAL SERVICING COMMANDS: /Set-LayeredDriver - Sets keyboard layered driver. /Set-UILang - Sets the default system UI language that is used in the mounted offline image. /Set-UILangFallback - Sets the fallback default language for the system UI in the mounted offline image. /Set-UserLocale - Sets the user locale in the mounted offline image. /Set-SysLocale - Sets the language for non-Unicode programs (also called system locale) and font settings in the mounted offline image. /Set-InputLocale - Sets the input locales and keyboard layouts to use in the mounted offline image. /Set-TimeZone - Sets the default time zone in the mounted offline image. /Set-AllIntl - Sets all international settings in the mounted offline image. /Set-SKUIntlDefaults - Sets all international settings to the default values for the specified SKU language in the mounted offline image. /Gen-LangIni - Generates a new lang.ini file. /Set-SetupUILang - Defines the default language that will be used by setup. /Get-Intl - Displays information about the international settings and languages. APPLICATION SERVICING COMMANDS: /Check-AppPatch - Displays information if the MSP patches are applicable to the mounted image. /Get-AppPatchInfo - Displays information about installed MSP patches. /Get-AppPatches - Displays information about all applied MSP patches for all installed applications. /Get-AppInfo - Displays information about a specific installed MSI application. /Get-Apps - Displays information about all installed MSI applications. PACKAGE SERVICING COMMANDS: /Add-Package - Adds packages to the image. /Remove-Package - Removes packages from the image. /Enable-Feature - Enables a specific feature in the image. /Disable-Feature - Disables a specific feature in the image. /Get-Packages - Displays information about all packages in the image. /Get-PackageInfo - Displays information about a specific package. /Get-Features - Displays information about all features in a package. /Get-FeatureInfo - Displays information about a specific feature. /Cleanup-Image - Performs cleanup and recovery operations on the image. For more information about these servicing commands and their arguments, specify a command immediately before /?. Examples: DISM.exe /Image:C:\test\offline /Apply-Unattend /? DISM.exe /Image:C:\test\offline /Get-Features /? DISM.exe /Online /Get-Drivers /? -Noel

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded I tried this command on a Windows 7 x64 VM with SP1 and it cleaned out 4 GB of data. -Noel

I also have similar problem. My WinSXS-folder takes up 4.8 GB of my Win-7 total of 10 GB of my old laptop's 20 GB harddisk. But when I tried the DISM-command i get a error-msg: error 740 "You need administrator rights to run the DISM-command" (translated from danish) "Use a command prompt with administrator priviliges to complete the task". So I understand that I have to start the Command prompt by rightclicking and selecting "Run as administrator". Yet, i still get an error, error 87 "The parameter spsuperseded is not recognized in this context". Now, I don't understand what to do about that... / DenisFranz alias SweDane

Looks to me like 2533552 already installed itself back on the 13th on my system. Good, that was the idea :) -Z

Actually Andre, the sxs is where the real files are, a bunch of files are actually hardlinks to the sxs :) Anyway, run the dism tool to clean out unnecessary files from the sxs. However, if you're on SP1, install http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2533552 first. There is an issue in SP1 is you run spsuperseded without this KB. -Z

Thanks for the information, Zac. Looks to me like 2533552 already installed itself back on the 13th on my system. -Noel