Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

joscon [Microsoft] — Sat, 11 May 2013 00:45:18 GMT

Sounds like you didn't effectively take ownership of the entire directory. What are you looking to do with TAKEOWN exactly? If you manually delete files from the directory, you do so at your own risk as we don't support it officially.

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

Anonymous_one — Fri, 10 May 2013 23:23:59 GMT

I tried the DISM and TAKEOWN methodes and both did not work :

1) DISM with administrative rights

C:\Windows\winsxs>dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /spsuperseded

Outil Gestion et maintenance des images de déploiement

Version : 6.1.7600.16385

Version de l’image : 6.1.7600.16385

Le nettoyage du Service Pack ne peut pas se poursuivre : les fichiers de sauvegarde du Service Pack sont introuvable

L’opération a réussi.

This roughly translates to it could not do it because it could not find the Service Pack backups.

2) The TAKEOWN method, I successfully stopped the process and did the takeown. But when it was time to delete the folder's content (juste on 250Mb file), it told me access refused.

What do I do now ?

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

joscon [Microsoft] — Sun, 05 May 2013 23:57:00 GMT

The supported methods are:

1) Pin SP1 using /spsuperseded

2) Force scavenging using Disk Cleanup Wizard or by adding/removing a component

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

Anonymous_one — Sun, 05 May 2013 16:42:52 GMT

I have been drawn into this winsxs discussion following my last month's discovery that my Win-7 partition was 21Gb at that time on my SSD partition. I had originally created a 30Gb partition for it thinking it would be plenty. But now that I discovered that out of that 21Gb I have a 9Gb winsxs folder to which Microsoft is saying it is very important but is not coming up with a solution that would take in account that no HD change or HD space increase in looked at. I installed Win-7 12 months ago and rarely installs softwares on it. I mainly use my Win-7's boot for games and building 3d stuffs.

I have read about half of the threads in here and got fed up. So I went straight to the end but only to find out that after 3 years the situation has not changed. We are still stuck with this problem and even if some glimps of solutions were found here and there, they are still considered not safe but with the exceptions of DISM and TAKEOWN which Microsoft has recommended.

I have not tried TAKEOWN but will in a few minutes. I have 250Mb of files in that Manifests folder. Even if this works out it is still not enough.

However when I tried the DISM way, I got a message (don't recall exactly) saying something like it could not find or locate the SP1 files ? I have not figured it out yet but then I did not concentrate my free time on this.

One thing I found interesting in this thread. If that winsxs folder is to act as a somewhat of a backup folder and we may find multiple versions of the same patch, then why isn't someone (ex: Microsoft) coming up with a software or KB to remove all those previous versions ? Why keep 20 different versions of the same software if only the last one is used (unless someone does a restore and then the N-1 or N-x version will be the one used).

Can someone do a summary of all the mentioned solutions and say which ones are safe, which ones save significant HD space, .... This is just to avoid anyone having to painfully go through all these threads. We need a summary !!!

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

joscon [Microsoft] — Sat, 04 May 2013 05:40:47 GMT

@V,

I understand the frustration, though I'm curious about the black box comment as I've done the best I can to take the mystery out of this portion of the OS via this blog. BTW, XP had its own issues, we didn't prune directories and that caused bloat. Also, XP doesn't handle the operations as gracefully as Vista++ operating systems. I've said here many times that I've seen a lot more issues with servicing in XP than I have since Vista release.

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

V. — Sat, 04 May 2013 04:19:23 GMT

As if the registry wasn't bad enough, now we get another mysterious bloated black box of a 'feature' that noone asked for. I'm stuck with Win7 for the moment, but I'll be going back to XP as soon as possible, which handles this issue the sane way. If I had only known this back then I guess I would have been creating placeholder manifests for all programs on XP to prevent them from storing data without my permission.

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

MPF — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 01:25:40 GMT

I began reading this article hoping to identify some additional drive space to complete the ghosting of a 300GB hard drive. After reading through this article I can safely say that many of you need to reach in to your penny jars and purchase some new hard drives. Many or you would live a much happier existence.

A 300GB drive is arround 60 dollars. Windows 7 should have spit the disk back out at 140GB.

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

joscon [Microsoft] — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 00:42:52 GMT

Yup, I published an entry on that a while back. I also have a KB you can reference in your blog if you like which covers some other stuff you can do: support.microsoft.com/.../EN-US

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

Clean up WinSXS — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:33:28 GMT

There is a command that we can run to make it smaller. www.productiveorganizer.com/.../how-to-clean-up-winsxs-directory-that-is-growing-too-big

however, it does shrink mine down 2.7 GB but i expected more. One of the reasons windows can be a frustrating installation is due to this.

re: Should you delete files in the \WinSXS directory? And what’s the deal with VSS?

joscon [Microsoft] — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 03:36:18 GMT

No worries, I totally understand that. I have a couple pieces of content on FoD in Win8/2012:

blogs.technet.com/.../features-on-demand-in-windows-8-and-windows-server-2012.aspx

blogs.technet.com/.../understanding-features-on-demand-and-role-persistence-in-windows-server-2012.aspx

I'd like to assume you've read them but then I never assume anything :)

--Joseph