Cant cleanup system files

Hi all,
I've just migrated to an SSD and need to recover space. My winsxs contains 9gb. I don't see the option to clean up the system files, as described in several threads. I ran diskclean in admin mode. I also navigated to the addon for the update, (Windows6.1-KB2852386-x64.msu), which said i had it installed already. All updates are installed (except langauge packs).

Not sure the cause, but any help welcome

Don't mess with winsxs, leave it alone.

From the horses mouth, so to speak: Clean Up the WinSxS Folder

Windows 7 is trying to protect itself that is why winsxs is not shown.
Just leave winsxs alone and let Windows 7 take care of it.
You will find many things that Windows 7 doesn't want the owner/operator to fool with for good reasons.

The large size of the winsxs is more apparent than real. The NTFS file system has long had the capability of having a single copy of a file appear in more than one folder. Vista and later systems use this feature quite a bit. It saves quite a bit of disk space.

Leave the winsxs folder alone. Improper modification can have serious consequences.

Thanks for the replies.

However the question i'm asking is why i can't see the option to 'cleanup system files' on the diskcleanup tool. This post indicates it should be possible from diskcleanup. However I don't see this option on any of my windows 7 machines, despite the fact that they indicate that the update is installed.

Cheers

Do you mean this?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/307546-windows-updates-remove-outdated-updates-windows-7-a.html

Install the update manually from here:

Disk Cleanup Wizard addon lets users delete outdated Windows updates on Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Advanced disk cleanup

Microsoft made winxs cleanup available via an update as you mentioned. If you want to see the option to clean then go to

Start> Run then type

cleanmgr.exe sageset10

Press Enter:

(Replace sagest10 with any number you like - for example sageset5) just remember the number that you used as when you run disk cleanup using this setting number it will remember those specific settings.

Make your choices by ticking the checkboxes.

To run the cleanup go to

Start> Run then type

cleanmgr.exe sagerun10

Replace sagerun10 with sagerun followed by whatever number you chose.

Download Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2852386) from Official Microsoft Download Center

Edit:

I've corrected spelling errors! Also if the above doesn't work for you (it has always worked for me) then use the info in Ztruker's link and try:

cleanmgr.exe /sageset:1
cleanmgr.exe /sagerun:1

instead of:

cleanmgr.exe sageset10
cleanmgr.exe sagerun10

Also note that cleaning up Winsxs will free up lots of space but will leave you unable to uninstall some windows updates or service packs so make sure that your machine is in good working order before going ahead.

Never heard of that before. Google gives a bit more info:

If you use the advanced switches to run Disk Cleanup it actually offers a lot more choices. In the /sageset:1 switch, “1” is just an arbitrary number. You can enter any number you want, but make sure /sagerun:”x” corresponds to the number you used in /sageset:”x”. So you can customize the switches for different types of files you want to clean in Disk Cleanup Settings.

For example, maybe you only want to clean Temp Internet files during a cleanup session, then you could do /sageset:1 and /sagerun:1 for that. Then if you want to clean up all files you could use /sageset:10 and /sagerun:10 for that. The switches give you more flexibility in the types of files that are deleted during the Disk Cleanup session.

Click to expand...

Found here: How to Schedule Disk Cleanup in Windows 7 & Vista