Richard J Green

Update for Windows 7 SP1 to Cleanup WinSXS

I was surprised that I missed this release initially so I’m a few days off the pulse with this post but Microsoft have released an update for Windows 7 SP1 and it’s a good one.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/10/08/breaking-news-reduce-the-size-of-the-winsxs-directory-and-free-up-disk-space-with-a-new-update-for-windows-7-sp1-clients.aspx

This update gives you new options for cleaning up the WinSXS repository using the Disk Cleanup tool, allowing you to reduce the footprint of your Windows installation. As time goes by after installing Windows Updates which are released to address security flaws or provide stability and reliability improvements, this folder grows. This is because this folder stores previous versions of updated files to allow you to roll back.

With Windows 7 SP1, we had the DISM command for removing the Pre-SP1 WinSXS repository files which for some people, depending on updates you had installed could save gigabytes of disk, so this update to clean up Post-SP1 updates is really welcome.

There are some options for managing the usage of this clean up as an administrator for enterprise desktops however the process is a little clunky due to the fact that it is dependant on some registry and manual command line actions, but its nothing that can’t be achieved with the deployment of a Group Policy Object with a machine start up script.

Happy Cleaning.

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