Can I remove winsxs on windows server 2008? It is eating up my hard disk

In case you ever need it, I followed this advice, and it cut the winsxs folder just about in half.  Everything seems to be working fine.  All that I lost was the ability to roll back to a previous Service Pack.

  • Start an elevated command prompt (run ‘CMD’ as administrator) and …
  • Run the DISM command, which replaces the old VSP1CLN and COMPCLN we used on previous Windows versions: DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /spsuperseded
  • Wait 10 minutes before the task completes ( it ends with “Service Pack Cleanup operation completed. The operation completed successfully”)

Normally you should have been able to reduce the Winsxs folder size by 1 or maybe 2 GBs, sometimes more. Saved space may vary a lot.

Just know that after using DISM you will not be able to uninstall the Service Pack 1 anymore.

Let’s have a look at the used switches for DISM.exe:

  • The /online switch tells DISM to work on the running OS installation
  • The /spsuperseded option removes the backup files created during installation.

Optionally you could use the /hidesp option which will remove SP1 (KB976932) from the “Installed Updates” section of Programs and Features, to ensure that users do not try to uninstall the Service Pack.

EDIT:

Also see this https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff630161(v=ws.10).aspx

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