Winsxs; the wrecker of lives.

Hey guys, I just wondered if anyone had any advice on keeping the winsxs folder on Windows 7 under control. You've no doubt been asked this question a million times but I've searched this forum for a while and to no avail. I use CCleaner, Disk Cleanup and WinDirStat at the moment. I've tried many programs in the past such as Ashampoo WinOptimizer and suchlike in the past but they never seemed to help with that particular folder.

Really would appreciate any advice you can give :)

Regards, Sam

Forget about winsxs and how much disk space it appears to be taking. Most likely, your tools are reporting it wrong.

Ok guys, I really appreciate your advice. I just didn't want my new laptop coming to a grinding halt like the last one, damned winsxs folder on my old one was over 60gb :\ I just hope Windows 7 is better behaved hehe!

WinSXS is absolutely vital in Windows; it was introduced in Vista to help prevent the so called "DLL Hell" that previous Windows versions experienced. Most of the so called entries in Winsxs are actually hardlinks to other files and don't actually occupy any space.

DLL Hell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows 7 does a better job than Vista in maintaining the Sxs store. I've nearly 200 applications, games and other software installed on my system and the folder is only 6.1 GB as reported by WinDirStat....

Hey hey

All of your info is greatly appreciated. Not used to such friendly people on forums hehe. I will leave that folder well alone. I've done the things from responses I've had on here and I've just freed up 9GB. Deleted some restore points! I almost passed out in surprise at it.

Once again many many thanks for saving a lot of hassle and anxiety :) You all rock.

Welcome to the Windows 7 Forum Viking Nuke.
I am also glad you ask before removing things from Windows 7. Smart move.