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Old March 23rd 19, 02:17 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Will winsxs stop growing?

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| When end of support happens in January, will it stop growing?

As I understand it, winsxs will eat a copy of any system
file it gets its hands on. So if you do something like install
a new printer or a new program that uses a new version
of the VC++ runtime, then winsxs will grab whatever drivers
or DLLs it can get its hands on. If you change nothing then
it probably won't grow.

In my tests it was possible to delete lots of stuff from winsxs
that I knew I'd never need, but that process could take days.
And when I tried to delete the whole thing the system went
haywire. Interestingly, there seemed to be no problem
with moving winsxs to D drive. But that doesn't actually help
anything.

My approach is to make disk images of a clean system.
If winsxs gets too big I can just wipe it and put back the
original 8 GB-ish install. I don't see any other realistic way
to approach it. You just have to accept that there's a
virulent, cancerous growth in the middle of your OS and
that it's inoperable. I've seen discussions online of people
talking about 60-80 GB for winsxs. It's like those stories
in National Enquirer about the obese person who turned
out to have a 90 pound abdominal cyst.


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