After my upgrade to Win 10 (over Win 7) I have a lot of Microsoft Visual C++ files, some x86 some x64 going back as far as 2011. I also have some Visual Studios redistributables most x64 but one x86) going back to 2012.
Are all these iterations necessary? Can i delete some? Or are they needed to run legacy programs?
These redists. are installed by programs/games/apps etc.. you have installed in past.
If you no longer have/use these programs you can remove them
however keep in mind that more than one program may depend on same redist.
ie. if you install program which requires VC++xyz, and you already have that redist. installed, installation will skip installing VC++. it's not easy to determine which apps/programs depends on these.
I have quite a collection too on one of my machines, upgraded from W7 to W10 back in 2015. I once thought I'd tidy them up and just keep the latest, only to find some of my older software stopped working until I put them back.
The do nothing until called by the software that needs them, and they take up very little space. I'd leave them there.
Bree and zebal are exactly right, but if you are really intent on getting that cleaned up, there is one sure fire way to do so:
Perform a clean install of Windows and all your apps.
I know that may sound excessive, but it all depends upon much you want to cleanup the system.
I have one laptop in particular that I like to run really lean and clean so I have a tendency to reinstall everything from scratch about once a year. This ensures that I'm running really clean
Thank you. That's what I wanted to know.
Quote
