How do I clean out the winsxs file?

My mother recently got a new laptop, and she gave me her old one yesterday. She cleared everything off (pictures, videos, etc), but there is still hardly any free space on the C: drive (only about 10gb of 60). I tried running WinDirStat to see what was eating up the memory, and the problem appears to lie in the "winsxs" folder, which is using up about 15gb. From what I can gather, that's the folder that holds things like old shortcuts/extensions/updates for programs. I don't think it should be that large though - not even the programs file is that large. So how do I go about cleaning out the winsxs folder? I have run ccleaner.

Any help would be much appreciated! Also please be very specific in instructions, this is my first pc

Thank you!

I know not to mess with the winsxs folder manually - I downloaded the microsoft disk cleaner update that will clean out the folder, and that freed up about 3 gigs which is progress, but not much.

The computer barely has any programs outside of the ones that come with the computer - just a few extra, like indesgin and skype. Also, the computer is not set to hibernate/sleep.

As far as another drive, yes, it has a Local Disk (D: ) drive which has a lot of free space, like 230 gb. It basically has nothing on it. Is there a way to re-partition the drives back into 1 drive (basically eliminate the D and put it all back into C) without wiping the data on the C drive? (The data on the D drive doesn't matter - it's just pictures and they've all been backed up)

Thanks for the links! I was able to delete the extra partition and re-allocate the free space to the C: drive, which drastically increased the space on the laptop. I'm not really used to computers having partitioned hard-drives, except for in the case of wanted to run a different operation system. What are the benefits to partitioning a hard-drive amongst the same operating system ?

Layback Bear said:

Do this tutorial by Golden so the members can have a look before you move or delete anything.

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

Did you read the 2 tutorials I posted?

This is what you posted # 1

So how do I go about cleaning out the winsxs folder? I have run ccleaner.

This is what you posted. # 3

I know not to mess with the winsxs folder manually

Please note:
I or any other member on this forum don't know what you do or do not know.
For that reason I gave this answer.

I do not recommend doing anything with "winsxs"

This tutorial by Bare Foot Kid is very useful.

Disk Cleanup : Extended

Yes, I read the 2 tutorials. They could potentially be very helpful, but the majority of the solutions listed were not applicable to this computer or its current settings, or I had already done them.

And what I meant by "I know better than to manually clean the winsxs folder" was it appears it needs to be cleaned, but I know not to just open it up and start deleting things I think look useless. However a program that can scan the folder and get rid of what is no longer needed would be very helpful. I used windows the disk cleaner program, but it did not clean up much.

I will take a look at the tutorials you just posted

The extended disk cleanup was super helpful! It reduced the size of the winsxs file to 8gb, which is about half the size it was before. I'm presuming that' probably about the size it actually needs to be (it's less than the size of the actual programs folders) I will probably create the shortcut shown in the tutorial so I can clean up these un-needed files regularly. Thanks for all your help/info carwiz and layback bear! :)