What is Windows Side-by-Side (WinSxS) folder and How it can save your server’s hard disk space?

Introduction

Whenever you install any role or feature in Windows Server, the installation wizard or PowewrShell cmdlet looks for installation files in a specific location i.e. WinSxS folder located in C:\Windows\WinSxS folder. If you go to this folder and check its properties, you will see it contains the largest space in the entire Windows folder around 6 GB approx in my Windows Server 2012 R2 installation.

And in server’s case, not all the roles and features are installed on servers. Only a small amount of roles are needed like Web Server, Active Directory etc. So this consumes lot of space for the roles and features which we don’t need to even install.

Now in Windows Server 2012, you have the option via PowerShell to remove the files you don;t need. I will tell you how.

Actual Lab

• Open PowerShell.
• Type Get-WindowsFeature, to get the full list of available/installed/removed features.
• Now to uninstall and remove the files from WinSxS folder, simply issue Uninstall-WindowsFeature Feature Name -Remove cmdlet.(E.g to remove Windows Server Migration tools, use the command Uninstall-WindowsFeature Migration -Remove). If you don’t use the -Remove keyword, the installation files will remain in the WinSxS folder and will be used if you install the role at a later time without going to WIndows Update website.
• If you want to install this role/feature at a later time, you can do this, just make sure that your server is connected to the Internet and issue this command Install-WindowsFeature Feature Name cmdlet. The command will first look at WinSxS folder, if the files are not found, then it will fetch the required files from Windows Update website.

This will save you considerable amount of space on your server hard disk.

You can also watch the full video here.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/pEQ6sml4FRKL/

How to Check Running and Stopped Windows Services Using Powershell

In this tutorial, I will tell you how we can check running/stopped services on a Windows computer using Powershell.

To do this practical, perform the following steps.

• Open Powershell.
• Type “Get-Service” command to check which services are running as well as stopped.
• To check only the Running Services, type “Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.status -eq “running”}”.
• To check only the Stopped Services, type “Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.status -eq “stopped”}”.

You can also see the video of this practical.

How to Calculate Hash of a File in Windows 8.1/10

This tutorial assumes that you have prior knowledge of hashing.

To calculate hash of a file, follow the above steps.

• Open Windows Powershell.
• Now type Dir command to view the files in the directory.
• Type “Get-FileHash file name” without quotes.

Here is my example, I have a folder in D Drive and I want to view hash of a folder located in D Drive in a folder named Web. Following is the Screenshot of the same.

How to Remove Built-in Windows Apps in Windows 8 and 10 using Powershell

Today in this post, I will tell you how to remove Windows 8 built-in Windows Apps like Skype, Camera, Bing, Calculator etc with Powershell.

While it is easy to remove other Windows Programs via Programs and Feature options, many users does not wants to wait longer. So here Powershell will provide ease with just a simple line of code.

Powershell is Microsoft alternative to Command Prompt (CMD). Microsoft has planned to remove cmd completely from its new versions. So it is a good time to keep our hands on Powershell. Like many other languages, powershell uses syntax, better known as cmdlets.

Before I tell you how to remove Apps via Powershell, I have tested this practical on Windows 8, because Windows 10 is based on similar architecture also. So the commands which are described below, will also work on Windows 10 platform.

Removing Apps Via Powershell

To remove Built-in Apps via Powershell doesn’t take longer time. Within 1-2 seconds the app is removed and you can see the output. In order to remove the apps, first you have to get the list of apps that are installed on your PC. To do that, follow these steps.

• Open Windows Powershell. (You must be an Administrator to complete this action).
• In the terminal Window, type Get-AppxPackage.

It will display the list of built-in Apps that are installed on your computer. Each entry contains the following.

• Name of the App (Do Remember that this is the app name that you will have to remember, when you will remove the app via the command i will tell you in the next step).
• Publisher Name.
• Architecture (x86,x64)
• Package Full Name
• Install Location
• Is Framework
• Package Family Name
• Publisher ID

The syntax we use to remove a specific app is – “Get-AppxPackage *Package Name*|Remove-AppxPackage”.

For Example, to remove the camera app, use the following syntax

Get-AppxPackage *windowscamera*|Remove-AppxPackage and Press Enter key.

If you want to remove all the apps, use the following syntax.

Get-AppxPackage|Remove-AppxPackage and Press Enter key.

Please note that this command will remove only programs for current user account. If you want to remove apps for all user accounts, use the following command.

Get-AppxPackage -allusers|Remove-AppxPackage and Press Enter.

However, it is not advisable to remove all the apps as this may affect the normal operation of your computer.

You can view the full video here also.