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Many posts on the web re:cleanmgr say it requires Desktop Experience, and some that just say copy the two cleanmgr files to System32 (two destinations). 

cd C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr....
copy cleanmgr.exe %windir%\System32\
copy cleanmgr.exe.mui %windir%\System32\en-US\
pause

I can't install anything as my disk is nearly full. Unless Desktop Experience has a 0KB footprint it is not an option. I copied the two files as directed on other posts. The program runs w/o displaying an error but nothing happens. I do not see the dialog box for choosing the drive letter as I see on Win7.

All I really need to do is clean up winsxs which keeps growing over time and filling up my C:\ drive.

How do I empty winsxs? Or anyone recognize the cleanmgr not doing anything?

This problem is on a production Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.

rheitzman
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    You do understand the winsxs folder is more or less vital to the operation of Windows right? If you get rid of it then Windows cannot repair itself. – Ramhound Oct 06 '14 at 17:04
  • Well, whatever CleanMgr does I want to do the same thing w/o installing the Desktop Experience. My guess is winsxs is a cache created by NGEN. I'd also guess that over the years some, if not most, of the files are obsolete. A SWAG would be that if all the files were deleted .Net would rebuild them as needed. On the next NGEN run it would rebuild the current set - No? – rheitzman Oct 08 '14 at 22:09
  • Winsxs is way more than a cache for ngen – Ramhound Oct 08 '14 at 23:01
  • Well, I'm not sure enabling the Desktop Experience would actually take any additional disk space, but unfortunately `cleanmgr.exe` seems to need to copy `%WINDIR%\system32\dism` into a new directory in `%TEMP%` every time you run it ... – SamB Sep 18 '15 at 00:55

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