title: How can I uninstall Win32 assemblies and cleanup WinSxS?
body: <p>After a lot of trial and error (mostly due to lack of documentation and examples) I have managed to create MSI installers that install custom DLLs to WinSxS as side-by-side assembly. There is only one problem: Uninstalling leaves all files (DLLs, manifests and catalogs) in the WinSxS directory. How can or should I best clean that up? I know for sure that nothing else references it.</p>
  
  <p>I have read somewhere that WinSxS has a self-scavenging process that cleans up over time but I could not find more information about that. Can you manually invoke this to clean up stuff?</p>
  
  <p>The only other way I see is manually deleting those bits. First you have to change the owner of all files (assembly, catalog, manifest and their respective directory) from SYSTEM to an administrator account, adjust the permissions and delete them. There are also pieces left in the registry (I think HKLM\COMPONENTS\DerivedData\Components may be one place), but since WinSxS should be treated as opaque it is hard to find any information.</p>