Help - Bloated WINSXS File

[BsOt]

I have a Toshiba laptop with a 40GB HD. It all of a sudden started to crawl
so during a diagnosis I found that I had only 1.4GB free space on the hard
drive!

Documents and settings accounted for less than 5GB. Program files (including
data in some) 10GB.

The surprise was my windows folder which is 21.5GB!! Go figure. Looking in
the windows folder I discovered the WINSXS folder was 17.5 GB!! This folder
is normally 8 - 10 MB!

Any idea what could cause this bloating? How imprtant are the files in
WINSXS?

Any thoughts appreciated.

Barry

 

[Guest]

Apparently the WinSxS folder contains language conversion information for
programs. Info on it here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...s/sbscs/setup/assembly_searching_sequence.asp

So if you use more than one language on your system then I would say that
it's important.

On the other hand, since it is normally 8-10MB and now it is 17.5GB I would
start looking for other problems. Make sure that you have virus protection,
as I've seen some viruses create 4GB garbage files just to take up resources.

Common sources of system slowdown include viruses, adware, spyware, malware.

If you don't have virus protection you can get AVG:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

Also make sure that you're protected against spyware/malware.
Ad Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Windows Defender:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

And last but not least: the Malicious Software Removal Tool:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx

After running these go to the WinSxS folder and check the files and see if
there are any excessively large files. If so I would say to rename these
files to have a .bak extension at the end of them and try running your system
like normal for a little while. If you're running problem free then it might
be safe to delete them. If you're unsure about deleting them cut and paste
them to another temporary folder (make a new one if you have to) and leave
them there for about a week. If everything is running fine I would say go
ahead and delete them if you want to. If you want to be ultra safe then do a
system backup before you delete them.

-Dan

 

[BsOt]

Thanks for the tips Dan.

I am only runnng WIN XP. I have done everything at one point but rename the
larger files and tried running without them. I'll give that a shot. The
computer runs AVG and Webroot Spysweeper. I've also run Spybot and Ad-Aware
to no avail. In addition I removed the HD and did a virus check using a 3rd
party PC....no virus!

 

[Guest]

Well, you're headed in the right direction. If Windows acts up because you
renamed the large files in that directory then you will probably need to
rename them back to their original filename. But lets hope that those large
files are only junk.

-Dan