Servicing changes in Windows 8.1/Server 2012R2

I've received a couple of emails asking when I would be writing about the changes in servicing in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.  The quick answer, when the product releases.  However, to tide you over with some material on some of the changes, I wanted to make you aware of some of the material our product teams have released for the 8.1 Preview.  The material is located here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn251569.aspx

A couple of snippets that I'm sure will interest some of you include:

• Determine the size of the component store using the new /AnalyzeComponentStore command: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn251566.aspx
• Clean up the component store and reclaim space using the /StartComponentCleanup command: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn251565.aspx

For fun, here’s one of my machines at work running the preview.  First, I analyzed the store on my machine and got the following results

Next, I ran the /StartComponentCleanup switch, which completed successfully and my new analysis reported:

So, my hard linked files didn't change and my backups directory went down about 15MB.  There was no appreciable change in the cache.  Lastly, I ran the /StartComponentCleanup with the /ResetBase command as well.  Here are those results:

Again, size of the backups folder shrank by about 13MB.  All in all, the reported explorer size of my component store went from 5.3GB when I started to 5.26GB when I was done.  Obviously, these parameters will vary greatly as more and more updates, features, roles, etc are installed as there is the possibility of more files available to remove. 

More on interpreting the /AnalyzeComponentStore output

Let’s talk a little more about what is actually happening with the /AnalyzeComponentStore command when its run.  As many of you are aware (or have commented here in the past), a very common complaint is regarding the size on disk of the component store.  We’ve talked about it other posts regarding how hard links work, what explorer’s doing, etc.  Well if you wondered about this stuff in the past, this command was built for you.

I know many of you have used tools in the past that are hard link aware to tell me about how the true size of your component store was only fractionally smaller than what Explorer was reporting and asked why we bother mentioning hard links.  The problem with those tools is they are only discounting “duplication” caused by hard links internal to the component store. That represents only a small portion of the misreporting due to hard links because it also needs to account for the files that are hard linked external to the component store.  Those files make up Windows and are required with or without the component store.

Given that, when we look at the example below, here’s how to read what /AnazlyeComponentStore is reporting back to you:

The green boxes above show that 100MB of files exist between the Windows Explorer reported size on disk and the actual component store size.  This is what was being reported by the hard link aware tools that some of you ran on your systems (this accounts for the hard links internal to the component store).  The orange box shows a “Shared with Windows” size of 4.69GB.  This represents the files that would be part of Windows whether or not the component store existed (this accounts for the hard links external to the component store).  The actual overhead of the component store is the sum of the Backups and Disabled Features and Cache and Temporary Data, or in this case ~480MB.

NOTE: The Backups and Disabled Features also includes component store metadata and true side by side components but that was a little too long to include in an output :)

Hope this is interesting, let me know if there are any questions.

--Joseph

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  ResetBase makes the last update as base for new updates. in your case it would remove the version 6.2.9200.16384 which is the RTM files. After doing this you can't uninstall the update which installs version 6.2.9200.16653 because this is now the base for all newer updates.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 13, 2013
  What's exactly the difference between /StartComponentCleanup and /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase ???

• Anonymous
  August 13, 2013
  And.... it looks like the .manifest files in WinSxS is now encrypted, how can I view the content of manifests for some manual analyzing ??

• Anonymous
  August 13, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 13, 2013
  The comment has been removed