Large installer and winsxs folders

My windows/installer and windows/winsxs folders are 12.7gb and 12.1gb respectively. In fact, my windows folder takes up 40gb of my 68gb of usable space.

I've done some reading about this and people seem to say not to clear these out and instead to just uninstall software. However, when going into "Add or remove programs" all of my software only adds up to 2gb total. So how are there 12.7gb of installers/uninstallers for 2gb of actual software? Surely there is lots of unused stuff in there and in the winsxs folder, can I clear them out?

Hello Vcize,

The folder "%WINDIR%\winsxs" mostly consists of hardlinks to system files, backup of Updates and multiple DLL file versions to keep compatibility with programs.
So yeah it is big, but the size is also fooling us cause hardlinks point to a single file to reduce hard disk space, though Explorer does not know that, so the size is much smaller than it seems.
out-web.net/?p=623

To decrease the size, first fully update your system to get the update for the option 'Windows Update Cleanup' in 'Disk Cleanup' which came originally from Windows 8.
blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/10/08/breaking-news-reduce-the-size-of-the-winsxs-directory-and-free-up-disk-space-with-a-new-update-for-windows-7-sp1-clients.aspx

Also i recommend you use Ccleaner to remove other kind of temporary files and history.

Good luck ^^.

Unfortunately I've already done the disk cleanup that includes Windows Update Cleanup. I will give Ccleaner a look.