As you may know, every Windows installation starting with Vista has a winsxs directory that takes up a lot of space... not a problem when you have a 500GB volume... but a big problem when you have a VPS with only 40GB of space and the winsxs is taking up 12GB!
Just ran across a post on
HelpDeskGeek.com that finally actually works for reducing the winsxs directory.
dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded /hidesp
I can verify that this command works Windows Server 2008R2 and Windows 7. I don't have a Windows 8 installation yet.
When I ran this command on my Windows VPS, the server's winsxs directory reduced from 12GB to about 8.5GB now...
Whew... space feels good!