Tag Archives: space issues

Can I delete the file C:\Windows\winsxs\ManifestCache to increase disk space?

Give the following credit to the source. 🙂 – Recently I was fixing a PC that had the manifest file at 30GB.  Below you would be able to find the proper steps to fix the issue.
Hi,
All the necessary files for specific additions, roles, applications will be contained in the %windir%\Winsxs directory. The %windir%\winsxs folder (also referred to as the component store) is used to store all the installation source files that are needed for Windows to service itself and its optional components, which takes the place of the traditional flat from media.
To achieve saving some space there is a workaround – to manually delete some folders from WINSXS. Take great care what folders you can delete, because you may break the functionality of your Windows installation and render your product unsupported.
a. Click on start and type cmd in the search bar and right click on cmd.exe in the search pane and click Run as administrator.
n. Navigate to folder C:\Windows\Winsxs
c. Run this command:
Net stop trustedinstaller
NOTE: Wait for this service to stop and ensure it stops successfully. If you are unable to stop the service, you must restart your machine. Do not attempt the next step if you are unable to stop the trustedinstaller service.
d. Then execute these commands:
Takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\*

e. You should now have available, some more free disk space.

Hope this helps.

Del /q %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* Icacls %windir%\winsxs\ManifestCache\* /GRANT administrators:F

Source Can I delete the file C:\Windows\winsxs\ManifestCache to increase disk space?.