If, as a Windows user, you want to clean up your hard drive properly, sooner or later you will come across the WinSxS folder, which can quickly grow to several gigabytes after prolonged system use. This article tells you what the WinSxS folder is and why you shouldn't delete it under any circumstances.
WinSxS - what kind of folder is that?
The WinSxS folder is a component storage directory under Windows 10, which assigns certain standard functions to the software installed on the computer and is used during every installation process. This also includes Windows updates or service packs. Important system files are also saved in WinSxS to ensure quick recovery in the event of a system failure. In the WinSxS folder, references, so-called "hard links", which refer to certain files, are mainly stored. These hard links are used by services such as Windows Update to determine when an update or a hotfix is needed. The displayed memory size of the directory does not have to mean that this amount of memory is actually used by the directory.In Windows Explorer, the hard links do not show the size of the link itself, but the actual size of the referenced file. You can use the "Link Shell Extension" tool to check whether a file is a hard link.
WinSxS - do not delete under any circumstances!
Since the WinSxS folder contains hard links to Windows updates or hotfixes as well as system-relevant data, a complete deletion of the directory can lead to serious instabilities of your system. You should therefore never delete files from the folder or even the entire directory indiscriminately. However, there are ways to put a stop to a WinSxS folder that has become too large and to give your hard drive some air. In this article we have summarized for you how you can shrink the WinSxS folder with simple means. In addition, more experienced users can use the dism.exe tool at a command prompt to perform a more thorough cleanup. This article explains how to clean up the WinSxS folder using "dism.exe"..