I know it can't be deleted and while there are some posts that talk about making it smaller, they have not worked for me.
At this point my 18 GB winsxs folder is taking up almost half of the drive that I have the OS on. I have tons of space on other drives though - can I move it?
Yes, you can. Read this.
Be warned: If you move it, Windows can get unstable, and BTW they'll be regenerated at some point.
That 18 GB isn't real since a lot of those files are hardlinks to files elsewhere and are counted twice.
I've been obsessed with winsxs starting with Windows Vista and after with Windows 7 until I gave it up.
If you want to do it, I recommend to read blog post Disk Space before.
Don't delete it!
Moving the WinSxS is not advisable because doing so can severely break your system.
In short, Winsxs, which stands for ‘Windows Side By Side’, is Windows native assembly cache. Libraries which are being by multiple applications are stored there. This feature was first introduced, in Windows ME and was considered as Microsoft’s solution to the so-called ‘dll hell’ issues that plagued Windows 9x.
In that folder are all the dlls that can be used by various different applications, the only way to reduce its size is by uninstalling applications.
There's more information on the WinSxS folder here.
As mentioned, Windows stores the old dll’s and library components in the WinSxS folder. Now if a newer version of this file is a part of the OS, but a particular application requires a particular older version for running, then the older version from the winsxs folder will be used, leaving the newer version in its present place, for other applications which may require it.
So obviously you cannot delete this directory or move it elsewhere. Nor is it advisable to delete anything here, as such a step could probably make your applications un-workable or even break your system! If you have many applications installed, you can expect to have a jumbo sized winsxs folder.
You can move WinSXS. I have done it before, but it's not easy. The best way is to attach the SSD to another computer, and use that computer to establish the junctions.
However, there is no reason to move the WinSXS folder. WinSXS is, most likely, not much bigger than a few hundred megabytes. This discussion talks about WinSXS and the misconception that its taking up a lot of space. As it turns out, the problem is with Windows Explorer incorrectly reporting the size of the folder, not the size of the folder itself.
It's a bad idea. It's like asking to move the old System32 folder to a different folder. I wouldn't dare do that on an older version of Windows.
If anything, I'd try moving the %Windir%\Installer directory.
That directory holds all the files necessary to reinstall your programs. WinSXS folder is heavily integrated into the system while the \Installer folder is used less often.
Nonsense! I move the winsxs folder on any install I'm fortunate enough to have another disk to send it to.
Now, the method of moving it is probably different than what you are thinking.
1) Close any running applications (This is important).
2) Copy your winsxs folder to another location (preferably off of your SSD :)
3) Now comes the magic: You are going to create a junction point to literally trick Windows into thinking the winsxs folder is in the same place.
3a) Start > Run > Type "mklink /J "c:\Windows\winsxs" "d:\winsxs"
The mklink command functions as such: mklink LINK TARGET, so in the above example the c:\Windows\winsxs acts as the LINK location where you want to trick Windows into thinking it still exists and the TARGET location is of course the d:\winsxs on another drive.
The only real drawback of this is if you manage to boot your computer without the other location and then you try to launch an application. However, if you are running an internal drive configuration then I guess I wouldn't worry about it.
I use this method ALL THE TIME for moving certain games in and out of the Steam folder on my gaming computers at home and even successfully moved the Adobe Creative Suite's MASSIVE install to one single location on another drive off of my wife's SSD.
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I would NEVER do this in an Enterprise environment but at home it's just golden.
Have a look at this link: how to move winsxs folder.
It worked for me on a virtual machine with limited disk space on the main partition, hence the need to move it to another one.
