Windows 7 is pretty stable. And you may have upgraded to Windows 8 or be about to take the plunge for Windows 10, in which case you can ignore this post. Otherwise……

If you are still running Windows 7 and have done for a few years, you will find that the free space on your C: drive is slowly diminishing. This isn’t that unusual, but the amount of space being used is a little alarming. Especially if you have partitioned off your hard disk, to run Windows itself from an SSD for instance.

The biggest culprit is the C:\Windows\winsxs directory.

Backup files from every windows update accumulate here. And until recently, the only way to clear out the space was to follow some manual command line incantations, while sacrificing a few chicken and clicking your heels together three times.

Finally, Microsoft have released an update to the Disk Cleanup Wizard that deals with these files.

Take a look at KB 2852386 for more information.