Ever notice that huge "WinSxS" folder on your PC?

An item in my April 23 WindowsSecrets column titled "System folders gobble up free disk space" generated some excellent questions from readers. For example, Joseph Goldman noticed that the WinSxS folder on his Vista machine was huge (the folder's also present in Windows XP and Server):

Could you please address the WinSxS folder? I have seen it at 6, even 8GB. Running the Vista SP1 cleanup doesn't help too much. I looked around the Internet and all I find is do not touch this space guzzler.

WinSxS is short for "Windows Side by Side." It's a compatibility technology for programs that require different versions of the same system files — especially DLLs — to coexist "side by side."

Here's a simplified example: Let's say Windows ships with version 4 of the fictitious xyz.dll but you later install software that's hardwired to require xyz.dll v3.9. Windows places the nonstandard version of the DLL in the WinSxS folder. The system's own copy of that DLL remains untouched. This way, the OS and the other software can both have the version of the DLL they need, thus avoiding the "DLL Hell" that plagued early versions of Windows.

WinSxS is clever, but it's not elegant, and it can end up eating a huge chunk of your hard drive. In this week's column, I'll discuss what you can to to keep it from getting out of hand.

I also discuss three other topics:

• Is it smart to save disk space by capping the pagefile size?
  
  
• More on laptops with no CD or DVD drive
  
  
• Gather ye scattered photo files while ye may
  

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