In reply to a post by Pipexer:

You're obsessed!

This is a thread about winsxs. If I was posting about it in other threads, I might give you some credit for that statement. Given that all the posts should be about it if we are to remain on topic, I suggest you start a non-winsxs thread and see if I post in it (if there is a connection between any such thread and winsxs that warrants it getting a mention, fair enough).

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

why single Microsoft out for criticism when lots of other software waste HDD space for unwanted and unnecessary languages?

Optional add-on software and its foibles isn't forced on the user in the same way as the OS is. When the OS grows like a cuckoo chick it becomes hard for other things to get in the nest.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

When I move to a new system, and assuming I do before this one packs up, I'll most likely tinker with winsxs. Just for fun. Not keeping my hopes up though.

I would applaud MS if they had some cleaning utility that could be run to analyse and clean out the unneeded stuff.

A guy wrote winsxslite to address this, the links are broken at sites.google.com/site/winsxslite/ but you can hunt down the previous version and some blog entries about using it. Best to try on a spare system or to clean up an image file as an experiment I guess.

7.28 GB on a 120GB SSD on a week old rebuilt system

Ahh, that's quite interesting. I haven't seen the size on newer installations. Any chance you can peek at it's size from time to time? Curious if the increase in size is all things, new applications, or mostly MS updates.

I have reinstalled everything that I had previously, and all updates to date, but will have a look when the next batch come in

Well it has just increased in size following the latest MS updates.

You're correct, why change if it's not broke?

I have Win2K as a print server, WinXP on my PC (10 years old) and Win7 on the laptop. It was Vista but that crashed at least once a week and drivers were a bit of a struggle for some older peripherals, hence upgrade to 7. Only crashed 4 times in 3 years.

All machines work without much thought but seems like a steep learing curve to move to Win8. And before anyone says different, just look at the many posts all over the internet saying that they've added software (sorry apps) to make it more user friendly desktop wise.

Fanboys of Win8 and IE10 will always big-it-up.

A big mistake putting a phone front end on a computer. The first thing I installed was Classic Shell. At least I can now find and run programs. The second was to install Windows Mail. The new laptop is now usable.

In reply to a post by DavidFinbarr:

Win 7&8 both 10 gigs

Since recent updates.
Win 7 10.1
Win 8 10.5