How to Reduce the Size of the C:\Windows\WinSxS\ Folder?

Bree said:

should already know to disable recovery before deleting their recovery partition

...or better yet, should already know to NOT disable recovery before deleting their recovery partition, as the file can easily be seen as just another little piece of bloat, i.e. due to the simple fact that you can still always decide to put your WinRE on the same exact USB flash drive you use with Ventoy if that's what you prefer. Personally, I, never use the WinRE because 1/ the AcronisBootablePEMedia.iso that I keep on there is based on WinRE and 2/ like I previously said, the Windows 10 Installation ISO─that I also keep on there─already does everything that the WinRE does, plus more.

Thank you hdmi and Bree.

Bree said:

That is an OEM provisioning package, required (along with C:\Recovery\OEM) for installing the OEM utilities, drivers and customisations should you ever Reset your PC. Make a backup copy of the Customisations and OEM folders, then you should be free to just delete them. You can always copy them back if you ever need to do a Factory Reset.

The problem is, that searching google for "USMT.ppkg", show results with people who deleted USMT.ppkg, and then got problems..
So what should I do?

Bree said:

Actually you're shooting yourself in the foot here to the tune of about half a gigabyte. The Windows recovery environment is held in a single 0.5GB file named WinRE.wim. There is only ever one copy of this file kept on your system. When you enable WinRE it is moved to your recovery partition, with it disabled it's moved back to your C: drive. You could remove 0.5GB from your C: drive by enabling WinRE.

Side note: a common mistake is to delete your recovery partition (which some recommend as a way to gain more usable disk space) while recovery is enabled. You'll delete your only copy of WinRE.wim and never be able to enable it again. To delete the recovery partition safely, disable WinRE first.

Well,
If someone regularly creates a System Image using a 3rd party software,
then does he still need anything from winre.wim?

Bree said:

In case it hasn't been mentioned yet, it is completely safe to delete any CU packages you may have in C:\Windows\Servicing\LCU. These are just backup copies of the latest cumulative updates, copied there when they were installed. By default the three latest are retained. 'Disk Cleanup - clean up system files' deletes all but the most recent one, but it's safe to delete that one yourself.

Thanks, I will do it.

hdmi said:

The main takeaway for anyone who just wants to debloat? You don't actually even need the WinRE in any way at all, as you can just boot into the Windows 10 Installation ISO with Ventoy, after which you will be able to do everything that's possible with the WinRE, plus more─lots more.

Or, regularly create a System Image with a 3rd party program..
You get to restore your C: to exactly how it was..
Much better than what MS might decide to do for you

hdmi said:

due to the simple fact that you can still always decide to put your WinRE on the same exact USB flash drive you use with Ventoy if that's what you prefer. Personally, I, never use the WinRE because 1/ the AcronisBootablePEMedia.iso that I keep on there is based on WinRE and 2/ like I previously said, the Windows 10 Installation ISO─that I also keep on there─already does everything that the WinRE does, plus more.

What are your favorite/recommended ISOs to put on a Ventoy USB Flash Drive?

And BTW,
did you notice any compatability issues when booting any ISO on Ventoy, vs when flashing the ISO to a USB Flash Drive (alone byitself, the regular and old way)?
From your experience so far, with various ISOs..

spaceman5 said:

Or, regularly create a System Image with a 3rd party program..
You get to restore your C: to exactly how it was..
Much better than what MS might decide to do for you

Yes, that was also my point, albeit it should still be noted that restoring an image overwrites any changes that may have been made to the data after the image was created so those changes will then be lost. Whereas the WinRE allows you to try and remedy a variety of problems in such a particular way that, if all goes well, these aforementioned changes will not be lost. Even so, the same can also be achieved by booting into the Windows 10 Installation ISO, i.e., with Ventoy. That's just because this ISO is a bootable ISO, and, booting into it is the equivalent of booting into the WinRE─plus more. If your installation of Windows gets so badly corrupted that you need the WinRE to fix it, then, more often than not, you'll find that the process of trying to remedy will require the Windows 10 Installation ISO in order to succeed, anyway in the first place. The only downside is that this ISO is about 6GB in size so it takes longer to load when compared to the WinRE. But I use an old pair of EMTEC SpeedIN' S600 256GB USB 3.0 flash drives the sustained transfer rate of which is comparable to that of your average 7200rpm HDD. These days you would be better off getting an NVMe SSD that you can install in a decent quality external USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbit/s) enclosure like this one, for example:
Amazon.com
I'm only saying this because there's multiple ways to skin a cat. You could also decide to use something like UltraISO for making your own WinRE bootable ISO if that's what you prefer. But then, booting into the WinRE based AcronisBootablePEMedia.iso will also give you a menu option that, when you click on it, it takes you to a command window from which you can then also do everything that can be done within the WinRE's command window, as it being WinRE based means exactly that: it is the WinRE, and has been that, for a very, very long time.

Either way, this whole discussion of whether you want to keep the WinRE.wim file stored on your internal drive having only limited storage capacity is as moot as moot can be. It knocks me unconscious why these types of discussions about it still keep popping up on here like what would appear to be every other week, when the vast majority of people who are running on Windows 10 never actually even use it or need it, anyway in the first place. I mean, even the free version of Macrium Reflect is based on WinRE. How many variations of the WinRE do people actually need to keep on hand? Is it half a dozen? Maybe more?

What are your favorite/recommended ISOs to put on a Ventoy USB Flash Drive?

• AcronisBootablePEMedia.iso
• Win10_20H2_v2_Dutch_x64.iso (or the one that exactly matches what you have installed)

If you like to boot into some kind of Linux Live distro from time to time, then who am I to stop you from doing it. Personally, I, don't use Linux─for all the reasons outlined in this post from someone who explained it much better than how I am capable to explain it:
KB4592438 CU Windows 10 v2004 build 19041.685 and v20H2 19042.685

And BTW,
did you notice any compatability issues when booting any ISO on Ventoy, vs when flashing the ISO to a USB Flash Drive (alone byitself, the regular and old way)?
From your experience so far, with various ISOs..

I have only recently discovered Ventoy, thanks to @EdTittel who wrote an article about it on his personal website, here:
Top 3 2020 Windows 10 Utilities - Ed Tittel
So, I haven't had the chance to use it a lot just yet, and in fact I vastly prefer to not boot more frequently than really is necessary to keep my Windows 10 going strong─I put my laptop in standby mode instead of waiting for it to boot or wait for it to wake up from hibernation, and do so in spite of the fact that I have an SSD and that I have Fast Startup set to enabled so it boots up reasonably fast. It's just that waking up from standby is still multiple times faster compared to any other option. Anyway. Info about Ventoy's compatibility with various ISOs can be found here:
test list . Ventoy
Compatible . Ventoy

Hi folks

This might be worth a look at - obviusly somebody got the idea from that excellent pre W10 program nlite


This one is called NTlite !!!

NTLite

You need to know what you are doing though.

Cheers
jimnbo

hdmi:
Really interesting, thank you so much..

Paul Black said:

I have run customised installs since Win Vista and have used those amongst others, some good and some bad. It opens up a playground of Tweaking and Testing and believe me, it eats away at the hours and days pretty quickly.

BUT... wouldn't life be boring if they hadn't made it possible for us to futz around with Windows all day long and most of the night?

hdmi said:

BUT... wouldn't life be boring if they hadn't made it possible for us to futz around with Windows all day long and most of the night?

Yes, this seems spot on. It's a hobby right?