Clear the WinSxS Folder on Windows 11 (Component Store Cleanup)

C:\Windows\WinSxS — the component store — is where Windows keeps every version of every system file it might need to roll back an update or repair itself. It never really goes away, and on machines that have taken a lot of cumulative updates it can genuinely eat tens of gigabytes. The good news: Windows 11 has a built-in, safe way to trim it, no third-party tools required.

Check how much space it’s actually using

Don’t guess — run this first so you know whether it’s worth doing:

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

Look at the Component Store Cleanup Recommended line at the bottom. If it says No, the store is already lean and you can stop here.

Run the cleanup

If cleanup is recommended, this is the safe, standard command:

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

This removes superseded versions of components that are no longer needed for rollback, without touching your currently installed updates.

Go further: remove the rollback option for old updates

If you’re confident you won’t need to uninstall your current updates, you can also clear out the superseded packages that let you roll back:

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase

Be deliberate with /ResetBase. After this runs, you lose the ability to uninstall updates that were already superseded — it’s a one-way trim. It’s fine on a stable, working machine; skip it if you’ve recently had update problems and might need to roll back.

The GUI equivalent

If you’d rather not touch a command line, Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe) does roughly the same job: run it, click Clean up system files, and tick Windows Update Cleanup.

What not to do

Don’t manually delete files inside WinSxS — it’s not a normal folder you can safely prune by hand, and doing so can break Windows Update or even prevent Windows from booting. Always go through DISM or Disk Cleanup.