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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:

https://i.sstatic.net/6nioN.png

but when I view the size of the Windows\winsxs folder it's more than 8GB!

How can I remove all these unneeded files?

magicandre1981
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1 Answers1

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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.

  1. Run Disk Cleanup
  2. Click the Clean up system files button to find the new Windows Update Cleanup option.

Applies to Windows 8

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
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