I tried wearing shoes without shoestrings because we were poor and I kept tripping over.
In fact, I tripped over that many times I broke my ankle, which meant I couldn't walk very far.
Can you see where I'm going with this? :)
If you mess up your computer by playing around with this folder, you may find a distinct lack of help in sorting things out.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.......that's my motto.
"this is complicated, at least for y'all it is" - bubba sparxx
Well it is nice to see that you are bound and determined to try and break Windows to the point of having to load a known good image or a total re-install to fix it. You are free to do whatever you want to your system, but please don't be posting any links to any auto "cleaning" app you may come with as there are far too many out there that would see something like and try it with not realizing what it can and likely mess up.
Or if you do insist on posting a link to, do you mind if we forward any and all help posts about it afterwards?
One other thing to consider ...
The files shown in the WINSXS folder are not there and they are not files
WINSXS contains a number of Junction Points leading to other files scattered about the system
It is a work around for those developers who insist on writing code that is hard coded to use a particular version of a system file rather than the latest version as should be the case
For example you have a file OriginalVersion3.DLL that is 20MB in size
Developer A writes code that explicitly calls OriginalVersion1.DLL so the windows system creates a junction point OriginalVersion1.DLL that points to OriginalVersion3.DLL
Developer B writes code that explicitly calls OriginalVersion2.DLL so the windows system creates a junction point OriginalVersion2.DLL that points to OriginalVersion3.DLL
Due to the way that the Junction Points are Parsed the WINSXS folder shows three Files Version 1, 2, & 3 with a total size of 60MB whereas the actual junction points are probably less than a few K.
I too was confused by this at one time, and looked into methods of reducing its size, but research has proved that the use of these Junction Points vastly inflates the real size of this folder
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