winsxs keeps growing

[whs]

I notice that my winsxs keeps growing all the time. I test a lot of programs that I download, install and uninstall with Revo when I am done. My suspicion is that the programs bring their own .dlls and those do not get uninstalled. So they start clogging up my system.
Anybody know whether my theory is right and whether one can do something about it - like delete unneeded .dlls.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello whs.


The way I understand it most of it is "junction points" have a look at the link below as a start.

Engineering Windows 7 : Disk Space

 

[whs]

Yeah, I understand that. winsxs by itself is not the problem, but the underlying folders are.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

As silly as it sounds, some the files are just a "reflection" of the original and is not really taking up the space they seem to be taking up.

I don't know if I'm putting this the correct way and I too would like more knowledge on this subject.

 

[logicearth]

How are you determining Winsxs is taking up space? Using a method that counts hardlinks?
http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/ar...and-windows-vista-and-why-is-it-so-large.aspx

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

This is very interesting.

The only way to safely reduce the size of the WinSxS folder is to reduce the set of possible actions that the system can take – the easiest way to do that is to remove the packages that installed the components in the first place. This can be done by uninstalling superseded versions of packages that are on your system.

From the link posted by logicearth, thanks mate!

 

[whs]

After reading you 2 interesting links I came to the conclusion that the programs I am testing are probably not the culprits for the growth of winsxs (or better said the folders it points to). It is not too bad yet on this Win7 system where winsxs is 4.2GB. On one of my Vista systems it is 16GB.
On a "normal" 320 or 500GB HDD, it would not be of any concern anyhow. But, for different reasons, I am moving most of my systems to SSDs - and there space comes at a premium.
Thanks guys for giving me a hand. I'll keep studying the subject because I do not think i understand it 100% yet. But it is interesting.

 

[whs]

This is very interesting.

The only way to safely reduce the size of the WinSxS folder is to reduce the set of possible actions that the system can take – the easiest way to do that is to remove the packages that installed the components in the first place. This can be done by uninstalling superseded versions of packages that are on your system.

From the link posted by logicearth, thanks mate!

I read that too. I am not sure though how the uninstallation of "superseded versions of packages" is done. I guess one has to keep the uninstallers of all versions. But as I remember, we all applied the Vista SP1 VSP1CLN.EXE which deleted the uninstaller - because we thought we were smart and would save some disk space. That deleted the previous versions, but hammered SP1 into the system.