Anybody know what these files are

[jimbo45]

Hi guys
Win 7 X-64 build 7077.

Was looking at ways of "reducing" the size of the C drive needed for the Windows OS.

There seem to be a HUGE number of these type of files -- weird names with random set of hex digits at the end. I've shown a few in the attachment - there's also zillions of these with a file size of 0.

(Thanks BTW to the poster who posted the link to the tree utility -- nice and useful).

Can these files be deleted.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Orbital Shark]

Strange, they look like registry entries

I think they might be something to do with the winsxs directory in Windows.

Although as far as deleteing goes, i've not got a clue. Sorry

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Thanks for your answer -- but I think I've found out now -- it's the way Windows stores components or whatever now -- pity it has to be such a LARGE file -- in addition to all the other Windows system files this one is over 5GB with just a minimum number of applications stored on my PC.

My entire LINUX server is less than 1GB for the whole thing including a large MySQL database set and a web and email server.

Surely it shouldn't be necessary to hold this stuff on a Local Drive -- if windows needs a component to update just connect to Windows Update.

OK 5GB isn't huge in today's model of disk storage -- but just because we HAVE large disks shouldn't mean we have to fill them up with what seems like unnecessary bloat.

Maybe a Windows Guru could give a slightly better explanation than this one and answer the question as to why this stuff needs to be held on a local drive.

Ask the Core Team : What is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Windows Vista and why is it so large?

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Barman58]

Hi Jimbo,

The WinSXS folder is a method used by windows to ensure that the correct .dll etc files are available to applications.

This addresses the issue where a program will only work with a particular revision of a .dll

The WinSXS folder brings all these various versions into a single place for ease of use for the OS.

The displayed size is however a misleading one as the vast majority of the files you see in this folder in explorer do not exist. The system uses the Junction point system to contain pointers to the actual files spread all over the disk in the application folders.

Explorer is picking up the size of the actual files and not the pointers in the WinSXS folder

With a display size of 5GB will actually relate to an actual size of a feww hundred MB, not a small number but nothing like it seems

I did look myself of moving this folder off the system drive to help with space problems with Lenovo laptops but found in the end that the space saved was not worth the potential problems.

I would not try to delete these files as you would probably find things would stop working - but I would not be unduly worried about the displayed size of the folder either

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Thanks for the info.
So if I understand it correctly it's rather like Linux Symbolic Links - which also is a bit of a confusing concept as well until you inderstand those.

I'll just regard these files then as a "Do not Touch" area on the disk. I'm not short of Disk space but just curious in what these actually were.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Barman58]

Hi Jimbo,

Junction points are Microsoft's official terminology for symbolic links, in fact a lot of Microsoft people actually use the name symbolic link .

It's the same thing as used with the old user shell folders when a Link is used to point a program to Documents when it thinks it's writing to "My Documents"

For anyone who wants a proper in depth explanation have a look here ...

Engineering Windows 7 : Disk Space