I'm having harddrive problems

Yish · 28th September 2008

Okay, so I'm running vista, obviously.

I have three harddrives, I'm running vista on drive D:.

It's a 24 gig hard drive, and I have a little under 1 gigabyte left. Problem is that I install all of my games and things on drive C:, which is a 110 gig, with 25 gigs of empty room left.

I looked around on the web and found a program called WinDirStat. This is great, because I can finally see what's actually taking up room.

There's a folder under windows, called winsxs. I've looked around for info on that, and it's been mentioned that it has something to do with third party downloads. Most people say it's a small folder of a few megabytes.

Mine's 6.5 gigs. Yeah, I triple checked.

Am I missing something?

This seems to be one of the problems filling up my harddrive.

Can I delete these files or what? I really need help. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Evan Omo · 29th September 2008

Hi Yish. Welcome to Windowsbbs!

I would leave that Windows folder alone. There are other safer ways of freeing up harddrive space on your computer.

Download and run ATF Cleaner from here. http://www.majorgeeks.com/ATF_Cleaner_d4949.html

Run Disk Cleanup. Start< All Programs< Accessories< System Tools< Disk Cleanup.

Remove Unnecessary Windows Components. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...ta-components/

Also remove any programs in the add/remove programs list from control panel that you do not use.

rsinfo · 29th September 2008

I second that, unless you are very interested in reinstalling Windows again.

**Arie** · 29th September 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yish

There's a folder under windows, called winsxs. I've looked around for info on that, and it's been mentioned that it has something to do with third party downloads. Most people say it's a small folder of a few megabytes.

Mine's 6.5 gigs. Yeah, I triple checked.

Compare that to mine: 8.42GB. 42,569 files & 11,392 folders. It will NEVER be just a few MB's in Windows Vista systems!

The Winsxs folder, stores manifests, optional components and 3rd party Win32 files. You could find multiple copies of some files, this is so that multiple applications (which can have different versions of the same system files) can run in Windows without any compatibility problem.

Winsxs stands for 'Windows Side By Side' (versioning).

You cannot delete this directory or move it elsewhere. Nor is it advisable to delete anything here, as doing so could probably make your applications un-workable or even break your system! If you have many applications installed, you can expect to have a large sized winsxs folder.

For more info you can read: What is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Windows Vista and why is it so large?

Yish · 6th October 2008

Just want to say thank you for taking the time to read and give me advice, I'll be using those programs you suggested, so thanks a bunch guys.