Hello Please Notice that WinSxS have system files and must NOT Fully removed and low possibly that hotfix wont work [ gonna check it for sure soon ] Anyway its could be recover easily with gimagex and ur iso or burned iso before u do that guide on ur OS u should know i cant ensure that ur system will work properly [well as i know its run Fine on vmware, tested Windows Server 2008 32bit and Vista Ultimate 32bit ] i found fast way to remove the dupe files in WInSxS folder files that dupe are mostly files that has been already installed on the system Like Windows media Player, windows defender Aero Tablet PC and so on....and that's why u dont need them Logic explaination : Ms use winsxs to backup their components to future install winsxs have system files and components files components files that already installed used to be dupe if its internal system files its wont be dupe the system will run them from winsxs dir [i hope my logic is right] as u see i use whereisit app to run dupe search my personal iso is about 1.1gb the hdd space take around 3.3GB so if ur iso is diff or u didnt use vlited its should be more then 1GB to delete ok now lets go 1. im not sure how much its needed but u should login as Administrator 2. go to console [ with admin rights ofc ] and run those cmds cd c:\windows\winsxs [ take u to this folder ] takeown /A /F *.* /r [ take ownership ] icacls * /grant Administrator:(F) /t /c [ give u full access to it ] 3. WhereIsIt will take it all from here just make ur disk image [ u can limit it to windows dir if ur drive is big and UnActive the Plugins will save time ] make the dupe search [Ctrl+D] run it and make it sort as folder delete all the files in c:\windows\WinSxS\.... [to make it fast make sure that u unmarked all the deletion options] [edited 1.6.2008 exclude backup dir and Manifests] Tip: edited 7.6.2008 use waik to pre-install ur feathers [with permanence="permanent"] to get ride of those dirs and save more space [the system will delete them after the installatio] and just for hold alt+n for few secs to skip the files that wont delete [ maybe they are in used ? ] Hope u guys find it useful