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Why is the Windowswinsxs directory so large?

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I wanted to put some sort of content on here quickly, so here is a link to my teams blog which I wrote last year about a common question asked when it comes to servicing the operating system.  "Why is the \Windows\winsxs directory so large?"  The short answer is that it is really a "flat" of your Windows installation which means that its all of the files needed for you to use Windows without the need to put a CD\DVD into the drive every time that you need to add a new feature or update a file.

For more information on why its the size it is, see my old post here:

https://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2008/09/17/what-is-the-winsxs-directory-in-windows-2008-and-windows-vista-and-why-is-it-so-large.aspx

 Also, check out some of the other cool information my team has regarding topics like clustering and DPM.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    If your Winsxs directory is only 9GB then you're seeing growth from another place.  What do you mean that there might be as much as 12GB lost during the day?  Do you know what directory you're accumulating the most space in?  That might help narrow it down.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Fixed..sorry, I get bad about tags.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    BTW, why doesn't this post have WinSxS tag? (blogs.technet.com/.../winsxs).

  • Anonymous
    January 20, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 20, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2010
    So someone, anyone, is suggesting that I have had 21, 000 installs on my system? Or 21,000 builds? Or has 21,000 patches been applied to my system? In less than a year? Or that my system should or could manage that number of system config sets of any flavor? and NOT suffer a performance hit? Or is it that MS just can't figure out how to manage this that is clearly just an expedient answer to a dilemma at the cost of the end-user? Mine is now over 7G - on this install. Was larger before that last crash and re-install. And my C: drive is getting crowded. I foolishly only allowed 90G for OS and mainline apps only. There must be a way to identify redundant files and directories. And waste. I have not run many tasks in as many as 5 different languages, which appear to be the only difference (title bar) of the content of many, many folders.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2011
    I run SBS2008 for a small office (only 3 computers) and the server keeps filling up overnight which stops our emails. There can be as much as 12GB lost during a day when there is very little activity on the client computers. I'm not IT  trained and I'm spending all my time reading blogs to find yet another fix to reduce the overcrowding, which all work temporarily but then we go right back to square one. Our winsxs is currently 9.19 GB: what did you mean "there might be something else going on?