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What is file repository folder and can we delete it?

Anonymous
2014-06-11T14:44:21+00:00

Original Title: what is file repository it shows full red, what should i do, to delete that particular ??

Hi,

In windows directory, it shows file repository and the folder is 100%, 

can I delete this folder or what to do.

Looking for your help.

Thanks

prema

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-06-12T11:59:57+00:00

    Hi Prema,

    Are using any tool to get the information "windows directory, it shows file repository and the folder is 100%"?

    If you are trying to create more space in the compute. I would suggest to optimize your computer and check if it helps.

    Optimize Windows for better performance

    Note:

    **1)**Disk cleanup cleans up files associated with your user account. You can also use Disk Cleanup to clean up all the files on your computer.

    2) Any data files that are infected may only be cleaned by deleting the file entirely, which means there is a potential for data loss.

    The driver store is a trusted location of inbox and third-party driver packages. This means that before a driver can be installed it must first be injected into the driver store, this process is called staging. The driver store is located under C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository. Windows keeps a copy of every driver you install in a place called the Driver Store. It is located in “C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository”.

    Note: It is not suggested to delete drivers from the folder as deleting an incorrect driver might lead to instability and issues within PC.

    Hope this information helps. Reply to the post with updated status of the issue to assist you further.

    80+ people found this answer helpful.
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  1. Anonymous
    2015-02-13T17:50:51+00:00

    After jumping through permissions hoops... I was finally able to remove one of the folders in the File Repository.... and THEN I was able to install the copier/printer that I had been unable to install for the past week.  The last measure was going to be re-imaging the machine, but since it's in a remote office, I wanted to exhaust all other possible fixes for this problem.  I kept getting 0x000005b3 error messages but once I removed the most recent folder in the File Repository and replaced it with the same folder from a computer with a successful printer install, I was able to install this copier.  I'm ready to celebrate, now!!

    30+ people found this answer helpful.
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17 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-05-05T18:24:37+00:00

    Do you believe that my C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore folder can be considered "normal", being 22GB on an overall C:\Windows folder dimension of around 54GB?

    any suggestion to reduce it?

    thanks, tf

    900+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2017-05-24T17:19:35+00:00

    Hi, useless moron.

    1. It is not normal, needed, nor acceptable for (ANY) operating system to take up 55 gigabytes of space, while constantly eating up more.
    2. it is not normal, needed, nor acceptable for a(ny) system's convenience folder that is useless 99% of the time and not required at all for the system to function, to take up 22 gigabytes of space.
    3. It is not acceptable, useful, nor properly representing the company you work for, for you to answer in the moronic useless way that you did.

    Hi, everyone who was as annoyed at this useless moron's answer as I was.

    Make a system restore point just to be sure, but then freely go ahead, change the whole folder's owner to you as a user, then add permissions to you as a user to do everything with the folder, then go into the folder, do Ctrl+A, Shift+DEL, wait for most of the garbage to get lost, tell it to keep the few files it can't delete because they are "being used by a program" (30 MEGS out of 22GIGS, in my case), then restore the folder's owner to whatever it was before and remove yourself as a user from its privilege list so that you don't keep your computer (more) exposed to potential attacks.

    You will be perfectly fine doing this regardless of what incompetent outsourced west-indian MS "support" people are telling you.

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2017-06-01T16:50:09+00:00

    https://github.com/lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer is a very useful tool for managing the driver store. Open it, restart as Admin, click the “Select Old Drivers” button (it guesses based on INF column being the same and Driver Date being older), and click “Delete Package”.

    On my system, I had a lot of old nv packages which had different .inf names but which were all obviously old/didn’t belong. I selected them all as well before pressing Delete Package.

    I recommend to *not* use the Force Deletion option. If you try to remove a driver but Windows is using it, it should fail. Force Deletion would allow you to bypass this, but you might render your computer unbootable. If you have a lot of bloat in your DriverStore, it’s probably caused by unused packages, so the Force Deletion option should be pointless when reclaiming disk space.

    This utility goes through the correct Windows interfaces to safely remove the folders from the driver store (as long as you do not use the Force Delete option, I assume). This way, if you try to remove a driver which Windows is certain it needs, it will skip that one instead of possibly rendering your system unusable. Thus, it is much better than manually deleting files as others suggest. And it is also a *ton* easier to use than the CLI pnputil command which is built into Windows.

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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