This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. What is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Windows Vista and why is it so large? This can only be done because by making the Service Pack permanent we can guarantee that we won’t ever need the RTM versions.įor the detailed information, please refer to the following Microsoft TechNet blog: Service Pack 1 contains a binary called VSP1CLN.EXE, a tool that will make the Service Pack package permanent (not removable) on your system, and remove the RTM versions of all superseded components.

This can be done by uninstalling superseded versions of packages that are on your system. The only way to safely reduce the size of the WinSxS folder is to reduce the set of possible actions that the system can take – theĮasiest way to do that is to remove the packages that installed the components in the first place.

Folder size 2.6