Windows Vista winsxs

I have a folder called winsxs. I have heard of it before, as I remember, it is windows side by side. What is it for? and can I get rid of it?

I have a recovery partition on this inherited emachine and I wonder why the winsxs folder is almost 8 gigs.

I am going to get rid of the recovery partition (I use Acronis) and I wonder if the winsxs would get smaller? My C: is 19 gigs which seems to be an inordinate amount of space to use.
Answer I used my friend Google. This is an excellent answer for my question.

 

Don't attempt to delete anything from it. The winsxs (Windows side by side) folder contains multiple versions of many files so that a program can use its "˜own version‘. Do you remember "˜DLL Hell’, where application programs were overwriting system dll files with their own versions and causing other programs to crash? This was a major problem and the winsxs folder attempts to lessen this problem. The folder can be "˜cleaned’ as follows:

1. There is a "˜run-once’ program in SP1 that will immediately clean up all the components that were replaced in the Winsxs folder when SP1 was installed. NOTE that once you run the program you will no longer be able to remove SP1 should any problems occur, so make absolutely certain your computer is behaving itself before running it. Firstly, check the size of the folder by right-clicking it, choose Properties and make a note of its size and the number of files and folders. To run the program, open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\System32, look for the file VSP1CLN.EXE (the capitals are for clarity only), right-click it, select Run As Administrator then reply Y to the prompt. Now check its size again. You will be pleasantly surprised by how much disk space you have reclaimed.

There is no harm in running the program where SP1 was either included on the DVD or slipstreamed into the DVD before installation. Depending upon what has been installed, you may gain some disk space.

2. If you have SP2 installed and are happy with its performance, you can use the Microsoft program compcln to remove files that SP2 has replaced. NOTE that once this program has been run you will not be able to remove SP2. To determine the disk space saved, have a look at the Properties (numbers and sizes of folders and files) in the \Windows folder both before and after running the program.

To run it, click the Windows Orb (Start) > All Programs > Accessories, right-click Command Prompt then "˜Run as Administrator’. Copy & Paste or type %windir%\system32\compcln.exe and press Enter. If you Copy & Paste the command, use mouse right-click to Paste it into the prompt. Type Y to the continue message.