Windows 2008 R2 winsxs folder cleanup

Question

I have a Windows 2008 R2 x64 server. Desktop experience is enabled. I've applied the KB2852386 from Microsoft that adds the Windows Update Cleanup to the diskcleanup tool. When I first ran it, it cleaned out about 2GB of windows updates. However, the winsxs folder still has about 8GB of files/folders in there. When I run diskcleanup again, it reports 0kb in that folder. What could be going on here? I'd really like to clean up this folder.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Answer 1

If Diskcleanup already removed all replaced updates, it can't to any to further cleanup this folder in Windows Server 2008 R2.

You must live with this folder size or upgrade to Windows Server 2012 R2, here you can use DISM to compact the WinSxS folder more by doing a compression and making the current update permanent by running this DISM command:

dism /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup /ResetBase