Weren't most of the files in that folder just hardlinks and explorer just messes up the size by counting files multiple times while there is only 1 physical copy on the disk

What Harekiet said.

Yes, but it still counts against available space when installers calculate how much is available, or in my case, when trying to keep under the 50% mark on an SSD to take advantage of a higher disk performance mode. My Vertex 4 likes it better when W7 - however it's calculated - is under that threshold.

Again, I'm just curious if anyone here has taken the shears to it yet, and with what results. The discussion as to what the folder is/does needn't be the focus - It's not necessary to go down a road that's been well covered elsewhere and not particularly VOGONS territory.

For now the only practical solution is to keep rollback to a previous OS after one is done installing/testing/uninstalling software. I do that for the most part but it seems like a lot of fuss. Ideally MS would provide a tool to identify and remove hardlinks [and orphaned installers, dlls etc], that a user has no more use for.

I've seen guides where people move WinSXS to another drive and link to it.
http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/12/installing-w … asus-eeepc.html

Some people try to "clean" it up but you can end up breaking lots of things by messing with it...

But I run 7 on a 60 GB Vertex 2. No problems, no special tricks...

swaaye wrote:

...Some people try to "clean" it up but you can end up breaking lots of things by messing with it....

See, that's what I'm curious about - "cleaning"...

I have W7 on a 50gb SSD partition, and all other data/games on other drives so I'm good too. But since switching from XP to W7 last September I've become fascinated with this folder and how it decides what to do.

I recently rolled back to a very early iteration of my OS [drivers, essential apps, and some games I know need to be reinstalled after a fresh OS install] in an effort to understand it a bit better. The folder was quite small at that stage but everything ran fine.

The folder soon began to blossom as I started to install new big games/apps [not on C of course]. Maybe there is nothing to it but it just seems bizarre...

EDIT: to clarify. I run a small battery of disk cleaners, like CCleaner, on a daily basis so most of the installation leftovers that can be removed are. According to the app WinDirStat bloat was mostly in Winsxs. And the size of the new Acronis OS image grew about 2gb even though only 500mg was actually installed to C: It all seems a little curious.

Well since a ton of people have become extremely concerned about winsxs, there is a lot of info out there.

informative
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/20 … t-so-large.aspx

Also, here's a way to figure out the true size. On my 7 machine the Windows folder has 4.2GB of links.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en … c-e557f3e3daa0/

Thanks swaaye. I went through a lot of those forums and threads too coming away with the general impression there wasn't much that could be done.

As I mentioned above my data and games are installed off C:. After a fresh OS install is set up the next thing I do is try to run all the games to see if anything needs to be reinstalled. I discovered years ago much to my surprise that the majority of games will run perfectly fine without having to be reinstalled. Sometimes a patch needs to be re-applied, or a registry entry made , but for the most part things are good. Setting up my games to run without CD/DVD increases the success rate further - a real time saver and a great reason to have a 1:1 backup of your games folder handy along with a text log of all the tricks you needed to do.

So it was interesting to see that from a driver/dll compatibility perspective, rolling back to a near fresh install had no effect on running all these games/apps. That is, it didn't appear that they "needed" whatever it is that makes the Winsxs folder to grow so much. Thus my interest in seeing how small a stock Winsxs could be that still works...

It sounds like winsxs typically grows from service packs and updates.

Games often have some of the DLLs they need right in the game folder, in order to get around library version issues. DLL Hell as they call it.

swaaye wrote:

Also, here's a way to figure out the true size. On my 7 machine the Windows folder has 4.2GB of links.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en … c-e557f3e3daa0/

I ran the app and tho I don't read German I think I have 4.1gb of hardlinks [in a 8gb winsxs folder]. I need to run the app on my pretty fresh rollback OS - if the links are the same then the bloat is coming from recently installed stuff that doesn't appear necessary to run my crop of apps/games. Hmmm.

I will confess that during the XP days I was into slimming XP down quite significantly. There were some good tutorials out there on what could be safely deleted etc., but W7+ don't seem as amenable to such "clear-cutting"..

swaaye wrote:

It sounds like winsxs typically grows from service packs and updates.

Apparently getting rid of SP1 leftovers was an important hurdle for 1st generation W7 users but I got on board so late my copy came with it already.

For updates I've been running something called PureRA which cleans out leftovers to some extent. Between it and CCleaner w/ the Enhancer I pull out a load of junk every day. GlaryUtilities and SimClean occasionally find some junk the others don't.

What else do you remove?

For Vista and up...
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download <- Windows update storage
C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2 <- Nvidia driver backup, not needed
C:\Nvidia\...
C:\ATI\ or AMD\

Remove or move pagefile (or make dynamic config). Turn off hibernation or resize. Use MS Disk Cleanup > Advanced > Remove old Restore points and garbage.

Usually with Win7 or Win8 and apps on a SSD (games on another drive) I hit around or under 20GB. I don't use a crap ton of apps though.

Just get a 512gb SSD

^ but where's the fun in that? you'd miss all the excitement of struggling against an oversized OS - it's an artform, just like conventional memory management under DOS 😀

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

What else do you remove? […]
Show full quote

What else do you remove?

For Vista and up...
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download <- Windows update storage
C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2 <- Nvidia driver backup, not needed
C:\Nvidia\...
C:\ATI\ or AMD\

Remove or move pagefile (or make dynamic config). Turn off hibernation or resize. Use MS Disk Cleanup > Advanced > Remove old Restore points and garbage....

Of course! That's Class 101 at Lean and Mean school:)

I'm just fascinated with winsxs since I have yet to see anyone tame it other than trim hand installed SP1 fat using the command line:

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

The way W7 [especially winsxs] tends to grow on it's own, especially without any substantial user changes, is beginning to bug me..

When I get a chance I'll attempt to transplant a stock W7 winsxs folder [extracted from a fresh install iso] onto my current install and see what happens. I'll boot off my XP drive to see if I can freely delete/copy into W7 ...

Harekiet wrote:

Just get a 512gb SSD

yep... 256gb is getting it done. But next SSD will certainly be at least that!

VileRancour wrote:

^ but where's the fun in that? you'd miss all the excitement of struggling against an oversized OS - it's an artform, just like conventional memory management under DOS 😀

Absolutely!

For thread posterity the results of the winsxs folder transplant operation were a failure.

First I extracted the winsxs folder from an image of a 2-day old W7 install to a temp folder [about 5gb], then booted Knoppix off a pen drive and deleted my current winsxs folder [9gb], and copied over the 'fresh' version from the temp folder.

W7 booted to a black screen & cursor only - both in normal and safe modes, dashing any hopes for a successful rollback...