I've been having some serious issues with my PC lately. While trying to free up space, I discovered that the winSxS folder was taking up a massive 70 GB, with the 'pendingdeletes' subfolder alone using 32 GB. I learned that deleting anything from the winSxS folder could risk the stability of my operating system, so I avoided that. After trying various methods to clear space, including a disk cleaner and system commands, I came across an old program called 'dism++' which had a feature to safely delete data from the winSxS folder.
I ran the scan, but it only found 800 MB of data instead of the 32 GB I initially saw. I was a bit skeptical but decided to go through with it anyway. When the process finished, it reported that about 1 GB was deleted. However, when I rebooted my PC, I noticed something strange: my free space actually decreased from 21 GB to 17 GB, and all the files in the temp and pendingdeletes folders were missing. Now, the winSxS folder is showing 0B, even though my drive's free space hasn't increased. I feel like I'm losing my mind here because it doesn't make sense how 30 GB seems to have just vanished. Has anyone experienced something like this? What can I do to effectively clear that data without risking my OS?
3 Answers
Steering clear of that winSxS folder is key! It's packed with critical system files and symbolic links. You definitely don't want outdated programs messing with it. A clean install might be the best course of action now that it's ballooned out of control like this.
Honestly, when things get this messy, sometimes the best option is to just format your drive and start fresh. After a good clean install, you can keep your system in check by regularly cleaning out temporary files and defragmenting the drive to avoid these kinds of issues in the future.
Might be a good time to consider upgrading too. This PC's been around for a while. Just trying to understand what went down here.
It sounds like you're dealing with a pretty complex issue. Since you're on Windows 10, it might be worth looking into your update settings too. If your system keeps trying to update and failing, that could explain some of those temporary files piling up.
I guess you're right, but I feel like I didn't really have a choice—those files weren't supposed to be deleted. I just wanted to figure out what happened, not end up wiping everything!