asked on

WINSXS folder taking up all free disk space

I have a Windows 2008 R2 x64 server with service pack 1 installed. Recently I noticed that all my disk space was all used up and found that my WINSXS folder was 13Gb in size. I tried disk clean up and that only relived 456MB and used DCIM.exe but it came back telling me there were no service packs installed. This server is my WSUS server so I tried cleaning up the server through server cleanup wizard but when I go to delete Unused updates and update versions the process fails with an error. I have searched the forums and cannot find anything to work. What can I do to cleanup my WINSXS folder without deleting the contents manually which isn't recommended nor do I really want to do?

SOLUTION

John

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Tim

ASKER

I have looked everywhere on the system to try to increase disk space but there is nothing and increasing disk capacity is impossible since this is the C: drive on our Domain controller. I don't believe WinSXS should be 13Gb in size. Why would the default size for the c: drive be 40GB if WinSXS is going to take up almost half the size of the drive?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

John

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

FOX

Download one of these -install on the server and you will see what is actually taking up all the space
ref link: http://www.howtogeek.com/113012/10-best-free-tools-to-analyze-hard-drive-space-on-your-windows-pc/

I like windirstat

John

I use Tree Size, but in this case the partition is SO small, it needs to be increased

SOLUTION

rindi

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Tim

ASKER

I have installed that update KB2852386 and that is where it freed up 456MB but I expected more that is when I tried DCIM.exe and that did nothing as well.

John

You have to provide more disk space.

FOX

did you download windirstat and run it on the machine in question? You will find out what is taking up your space.

Albert Widjaja

Have your tried the combination of CCleaner and Dism command below:

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

It works for my case most of the time.

Tim

ASKER

I currently have TreeSize free on the server and when I run it the folder that takes up the most space is the Winsxs folder @ 13GB.

When I run the DISM command above I get 'Service Pack Cleanup can't proceed: No service pack backup files were found. The operation completed successfully.'

I have Trend Micro Worry Free running on this server to and it is taking up 7.3GB which I will address and it what brought my attention to this disk space issue because each time I try to update the Pattern file will not updated due to insufficient disk space.

rindi

Maybe you should uninstall trendmicro, then install it to another partition, if you have one available. Normally all non OS software should be installed to other partitions.