Winsxs/pending.xml files taking up all disk space

[Marka63]

there are three huge pending.xml files located in the winsxs sub directory the largest one is over 12gb!

I no longer have any space left on the boot drive c: which is a 64gb Ssd..

Can anyone help with suggesting what the best course of action is to take.

I have previously had space issues and have compressed the drive, removed the swap file from the Ssd to the bigger data drive run disk cleanup to remove restore points etc

 

[Barman58]

Winsxs is not a normal folder it contains symbolic links to files that are actually located all around the system folders - unfortunately symbolic links are designed to report size and other information to windows explorer as that of the endpoint files not the few bytes that the links actually take.

If you look at the winsxs folder as it really is then you would see an actual size of less that 1% of that reported by File Explorer, so to clear this folder you will need to uninstall the programs that are generating the linked files and then performing a disk clean-up

This utility may help grasp the issues involved

NTFSLinksView - View NTFS symbolic links and junction points