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I'm trying to free-up space on my windows 7 OS drive. I've install all windows updates to-date and the Windows folder has almost doubled in size. I've read some articles on how to remove unneeded windows update files via disk cleanup.
When I do a disk cleanup it says I have barely any windows update files to remove:
but when I view the size of the Windows\winsxs folder it's more than 8GB!
How can I remove all these unneeded files?
Dili
Posted 2014-03-13T22:24:42.713
Reputation: 39
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The amount of disk space you can reclaim will vary depending on the number of updates you have installed. You have to remember however that after performing this cleanup, you will not be able to uninstall any of the updates currently installed. but you can manually download and install previous update versions if you ever need to rollback.
See this kb2852386 of Microsoft.
Clean up system files button to find the new Windows Update Cleanup option.See this article(Clean Up the WinSxS Folder) of Microsoft.
the following command will uninstall all previous versions of components without the scheduled task’s 30-day grace period:
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
The following command will remove files needed for uninstallation of service packs. You won’t be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs after running this command:
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /SPSuperseded
The following command will remove all old versions of every component. You won’t be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs or updates after this completes:
DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
stderr
Posted 2014-03-13T22:24:42.713
Reputation: 9 300
2These command you list do not work for windows 7 – Ramhound – 2014-03-13T22:43:15.377
thanks for your reply! i already understood the implications of manually removing files from the winsxs directory. i was only asking why disk clean-up shows practically no space to free-up while the winsxs directory is more than 8GB in size. also, the article you provided seems to apply only to windows 8.1. my post was for windows 7. – Dili – 2014-03-13T22:50:24.390
@Dili - Because you can't simply find the size of WinSXS by checking its properties for a variety of reasons. junction points for one. – Ramhound – 2014-03-13T23:04:22.027
@Dili added information to windows 7, but nothing you have not already tried. :( – stderr – 2014-03-13T23:09:00.463
@Tiago C & Ramhound: thanks for the help! i read in the KB2852386 article and it mentions that it will delete updates you no longer need. i'm assuming windows believes i still need everything in winsxs. i really don't care about rolling back an update i just want to save disk space – Dili – 2014-03-14T00:48:30.310
@TiagoƇ.: thanks for the link but i already tried everything the article mentioned :) – Dili – 2014-03-17T13:24:52.227
The files you want to delete are not useless it's really not suggested to delete them – Ramhound – 2014-03-13T22:43:35.503
@techie007: it is a similar post but my problem is that disk cleanup doesn't want to get rid of the old windows update components. in windows 8, you can simply run the DISM command in Tiago's answer below to do the clean but an alternative in windows 7 doesn't exist – Dili – 2014-03-17T13:32:39.177