The Winsxs directory

[IDLE]

i have been doing research on this directory on why it gets large. but in my research i have seen this directory get around 5 - 6 gigs in size. mine is almost 13 gigs. how can i found out which directory is hold all of this space? im trying pie charts but they cant display many thousand directories.
any ideas?

x64 ultimate from a clean install not an upgrade.

 

[kcnychief]

It is where Windows keeps copies of all sorts of .dll's and such for different versions when updates, applications or other items are installed on your machine. Grows pretty quickly - normal size is around 9GB for a x64 install and can balloon up to 12GB in normalcy.

Give this a once over, lots of good stuff and opinions -

http://forums.microsoft.com/technet...tid=1173190&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=0

 

[IDLE]

great thanks.

 

[fitz]

If you have SP1 installed, you can also run the VSP1CLN.exe command that came with Vista SP1 to remove the pre-SP1 files. It will prevent you from ever being able to remove SP1 later, but I'm assuming you won't mind that. It should free up a GB or two from the winsxs directory.

 

[Perris Calderon]

If you have SP1 installed, you can also run the VSP1CLN.exe command that came with Vista SP1 to remove the pre-SP1 files. It will prevent you from ever being able to remove SP1 later, but I'm assuming you won't mind that. It should free up a GB or two from the winsxs directory.

hey fitz, I haven't run VSP1CLN.exe but my disc is getting might tight, how much space did you save and how much time did it take?

 

[fitz]

I think i cleared up about 4GB - can't remember how long it took. I've heard some people only cleared about about 1-2GB and some that freed up 8-9GB so who knows..

I'll probably be running it again shortly as I recently reloaded my Vista load but may not get to running it for another week or two as I'll be on vacation shortly.

 

[Dark Atheist]

didnt clear anything for me - wonder if its because i use sp1 disc

 

[Perris Calderon]

didnt clear anything for me - wonder if its because i use sp1 disc

ya, the exe is only going to clear out backup files for uninstalling sp1

 

[Dark Atheist]

with the size of vista as it is theres bound to be more files somewhere for me to delete to get the free space back up

 

[LordOfLA]

buy. a. new. disk

1TB < £100 no excuse

 

[Dark Atheist]

no money

 

[IDLE]

i ran a disk pie to determine where the large directories are located. the largest i found was a native lanuguage folders, but there was around 8 of them. pushing 250mb a piece. also found a directory that has MS videos which is 150mb. i tried to delete that and i could not. tells me access denied even though i am the admin.(admin user id) i tried to take owenership of he folder and even the files but will not apply. i will try out the EXE from the previous post and let you know how much gets removed.

 

[Dark Atheist]

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx

 

[Perris Calderon]

i will try out the EXE from the previous post and let you know how much gets removed.

just paste VSP1CLN.exe into your run box and hit enter

it took both my laptops about 15 minutes

 

[IDLE]

just paste VSP1CLN.exe into your run box and hit enter

it took both my laptops about 15 minutes

took me about 5 minutes and dropped about 3 gigs. now iam showing 10.3gigs in size.

 

[kcnychief]

I feel compelled to add to this thread -

I just did a re-install about two weeks ago, didn't really change anything for the most part, but my disk space was disappearing before my very eyes.

I downloaded a tool to give me a breakdown of where everything was. I was at only about 4GB free space of 300 - but the program showed I was really only using around 96. I checked winsxs, not too much - maybe 6GB.

I checked System Restore - after turning it off, which deleted all points, since I don't have any plans to use it anyway - I went from 3GB free to 199GB free. Holy ****!

I know most people want to use it, but I recommend you check your settings and/or control how much space it uses. Maybe clear up some old restore points you may not need. I was about to buy a bigger drive but didn't understand why I needed to since I didn't have this problem before the re-install (had previously turned it off and forgot to do that again).

 

[Dark Atheist]

first thing i turn off