That's where you might stumble upon the WinSxS folder. It has a size of almost 5—10GB, and for many users, it's like a black box in the Windows world. Naturally, it raises the question of what exactly are those files installed in WinSxS and why it's so huge.
Web searches and forums are full of questions about this folder. Let's demystify the secrets of WinSxS and the correct way to manage it. In simple terms, it involves instances when any program alters the dynamic link library DLL file to affect the critical function of other applications that need to use the same DLL.
For example, assume that an app requires a DLL with version number 1. If another app replaces the resource with a different version, say 1. Windows XP saw the proper launch of the component store.
It would store all the different versions of DLLs installed by software and hardware packages and load the correct version on demand. So how does an app knows what version of a DLL it needs to load? This is where the " manifest file " plays an important role. It contains settings that inform the operating system how to handle a program when it starts and the correct version of DLL.
Each component has an identity with a unique name that may include processor architecture, language, version, and ID. Specific versions of these components are then collected together into packages.
Hard links are used throughout the Windows OS. In terms of WinSxS, it's the only location where components live on the system. All the other instances of the files outside the component store are hard-linked to the WinSxS folder. So, what is a hard link? According to Microsoft Docs , a hard link is a file system object which allows two files to refer to the same location on disk.
Show 10 more comments. TL;DR winsxs actually contains hard links. Well, mostly. Because: that operation makes a list of all the selected files including hard links as separate files, takes each of them and adds the sizes up, the drives properties counts the actual stored data not all the files will be counted, folders protected from traversing and files from reading will not be counted and the System Volume Information usually has very large files protected just in this manner that number is useful only in cases of file transfer, if the files, links, etc need to be copied to DVD or NAS, that's how much they would occupy, and the links will not be preserved since they are NTFS specific features, not available or available in different forms under ISO, UDF, NFS and other file systems, but they will be cloned.
Mateen Ulhaq Mateen Ulhaq 3, 5 5 gold badges 33 33 silver badges 54 54 bronze badges. Is this answer not an extremely important aspect which is completely missing in the accepted answer? Add a comment. These duplicates and backups are extremely annoying when having limited disk space. I tried compressing it and i says "Access denied" to the folder and then poqexec.
Assumed it was a read lock. Anything to bypass this? Actually, you're still jeopardizing your OS's stability. In fact, it's quite a bad idea. Just google 'compress winsxs' and you'll find out. I'm not sure that this technique is a good idea -- many files in the winsxs tree are hard-links. Will enabling compression on these files compress all instances of the file? There could be some unintended performance consequences.
FiascoLabs, have you noticed this is a 4 year old question, which specifically refers to a 10GB drive? You could just as well state that "nobody uses Vista". It might be true now, but wasn't so at the time the question was asked. Show 7 more comments. Users will be prompted a question whether to keep Vista SP2 permanently in the system. Tomas Andrle Tomas Andrle 3, 4 4 gold badges 28 28 silver badges 32 32 bronze badges. I couldn't locate this in my Vista SP1 — pencilslate.
Yeah it's probably new in Vista SP2. Didn't save so much for me, but I can confirm that the tool exists and it saved me a G plus — itj. This is now available for Windows 7 SP1 as well: support. Here it was Of the files in WinSXS , take up 2. Is this typical of a current W10 install or are we still clogged? LaurieStearn I have no idea. Ben Lings Ben Lings 1, 1 1 gold badge 16 16 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges.
These guys shed 7GB with this tool: bit-tech. Tick this option. Mark Henderson Mark Henderson 6, 5 5 gold badges 39 39 silver badges 51 51 bronze badges. Component store analysis tool: Dism. You will save gigabytes of space Click ok, then scan It'll give you an idea of how much space you'll save. Specific instructions on how to use this program should be provided. I am able to get the program from Github but I am unable to visit the link you provided. I've tried this on a VM - seems pretty fast and hasn't really broken anything as far as I can tell.
I might play with this, since it does seem to have a few nifty post-install features ooh driver backups! I've edited your answer with basic steps and a screenshot. If an update fails, you can usually restore the previous version of an application.
This version is stored in a system folder called WinSxS. The folder has other important functions too. Over time, it takes up a considerable amount of disc space. This raises the question of when and under what circumstances you should clean up the WinSxS folder.
Most importantly, however, you should never manually delete files from the WinSxS folder. This can significantly affect your system's ability to function. WinSxS is a system folder in Windows. The folder is also called the component store. It primarily contains system files and can be several gigabytes in size.
The WinSxS folder stores the necessary files for system recovery. Specifically, it allows for the following applications:. Microsoft operating systems offer several options for cleaning up the WinSxS folder. There are hardly any differences between common Windows versions 8, 8. For all versions, the size of the system folders displayed in the Explorer does not necessarily match the actual disk space because of hard links to existing files.
Links are entries that refer to other files. A distinction is made between hard links and symbolic links also called soft links.
The contents of a file are stored separately from the metadata name and path in the file system. When you create hard links, a new name is entered that points to the location of an existing file. This entry is indistinguishable from the original file entry. By contrast, soft links contain only a reference to the original file entry. Soft links have the extension. It's important not to delete unneeded program versions from the WinSxS folder until the system has been running stably for a long time.
Otherwise, you may no longer be able to downgrade to an older version or remove updates. You can also use this utility to clean up other Windows folders.
You can open it from the search box or by typing cleanmgr. First, the system will ask you to select the drive you want to clean up. These include:. After selecting the file categories, click the OK button to confirm that you want to delete the files. And, any updates to those files are also held within the component store as the updates are installed. This causes the component store to grow over time as more updates, features, or roles are added to the installation.
The component store uses NTFS hard links between itself and other Windows directories to increase the robustness of the Windows platform. The component store will show a large directory size because of how the Windows Explorer shell accounts for hard links. The Windows shell will count each reference to a hard link as a single instance of the file for each directory in which the file resides.
For example, if a file that is named advapi The component store cannot reside on a volume other than the system volume because of the NTFS hard links. If you try to move the component store, this will result in the inability to correctly install Windows updates, service packs, roles, or features.
Additionally, we do not recommend that you manually remove or delete files from the component store. To reduce the size of the component store directory on a Windows installation, you can decide to make the service pack installation permanent and reclaim used space from the service pack files.
However, if you make the service pack installation permanent, the service pack is not removable.
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