You should periodically use a registry cleaner, as well as other tools for cleaning. (Currently CCleaner is my favourite all round cleaner.) Then reinstallation of the OS becomes unnecessary.

I would love to actually do a reinstall of my OS as you describe, but to reinstall all the updates for the OS and my software and its updates would be a daunting chore. For example, my current compiler is a professional enterprise version of MVC2008 I bought second hand. This compiler, like all versions Microsoft produces, is buggy and requires installation of other components to fix the bugs. I don't even remember what these are now. All I remember is that it took a lot of research to get my compiler to work (mostly) properly.

This from the link provided above to information about WinSxS...

The winsxs directory typically starts at several gigabytes in size and continues to grow as applications are installed. Further, there is currently no supported way to significantly reduce the size of the winsxs directory.

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It's probably system restore points. Pull up the drive properties window, click the Disk Cleanup button and select the More Options tab. There's a section for "System Restore and Shadow Copies" with a Clean Up button. Click that button and it'll delete all but the most recent system restore point. I click the button and then click the Disk Cleanup tab, it won't change tabs immediately but it will when the restore point cleanup finishes. That makes a good visual indicator of when things are finished. Cancel out of all the dialogs and check your free space.

The downside of doing this is that you won't be able to revert system configuration changes to earlier states, just to the one before the most recent change. So don't do this cleanup unless you're sure your current configuration's running stably (ie. don't do it immediately after installing new stuff, wait a week or so in case problems surface).

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• Windows cleaning - Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, June 03 2013 @ 04:01 AM EDT
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