Agressively reducing WinSXS with DISM

In my recent quest to reduce virtual server images I noticed that a huge part of the total image is taken up by the WinSXS folder. Here is a comprehensive list of DISM commands you can run to reduce that beyond what is possible by running "Disk Cleanup" from the properties of the C: drive.

Always use a command prompt that is run as Administrator (start menu, type CMD, right click on cmd.exe, Run as Administrator)!

for Windows 8.x, 10 and Windows Server 2012 (R2)

It's always a good idea and can avoid a lot of strange error messages to make sure the Deployment Image is in a healthy condition:
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Use this to understand how much of your WinSXS is actually shared with (actively used by) Windows, and how much is taken up by unused features / packages and other stuff:
dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

Use this to get rid of the files from before a service pack was applied:
Dism /online /Cleanup-Image /SPSuperseded

And this one will make sure only the latest necessary version of each file in WinSXS is kept around:
Dism /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase

More aggressive cleansing

Should you want to get rid of all the unused features as well, you can do this:
DISM.exe /Online /English /Get-Features /Format:Table > features.lst

Then you can use this short bash command line to create a .bat file to remove all files that belong to disabled features: (use your Linux, or for windows: use the Linux subsystem in Windows 10, Cygwin on earlier versions of Windows to run bash)
grep '| Disabled\s*$' CMOD-features.lst|cut -d '|' -f 1|while read; do echo "DISM.exe /Online /Disable-Feature /featurename:${REPLY// /} /Remove"; done > remove-disabled-features.bat

Then just run the created .bat file to remove all the rest of the cruft. In theory Windows will be able to reinstall these files if you turn on any of the features, for which the files were removed, but I would not go ahead with the removal until I am reasonable sure I only remove what I will not need. YMMV!

For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

It's always a good idea and can avoid a lot of strange error messages to make sure the Deployment Image is in a healthy condition:
dism /online /Cleanup-Image /scanhealth

Use this to get rid of the files which were deprecated by installed Service Packs:
DISM.exe /Image:C:\test\offline /Cleanup-Image /spsuperseded /hidesp

You can get the list of packages, and seems safe to remove the ones that are not "Installed" but "Staged" or "Superseded"

dism /online /Format:Table /Get-Packages > packages.lst

Then remove them, for example:
dism /online /remove-package /packagename:Microsoft-Windows-CodecPack-Basic-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.7601.17514

You can also list the installed features both enabled and disabled:
dism /online /get-features >features.lst

But so far I have found no way on the older Windows versions to remove the files from WinSXS that belong to disabled features...

Extract all your Pictures, Videos, PDFs from iPhone backup!

I hate the fact that is so hard to retrieve all my files that I have on the iPhone (this is one of the reasons why I am switching from iPhone to an android device). They are all in the iPhone backup, but with their names scrambled, without extensions is impossible to sort thousands of files.

But not any longer, see how you can get access to all your files and data!

1. Create a backup of your iPhone on your computer, that is _not_ encrypted (as described here)
2. Find the files of your backup:
   
   • on Windows 8.x and 10 it is here: c:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
   • on Windows 7 and Vista: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
   • on Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup 
   • on OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
3. Each backup name is a 40 character long SHA (seems like garbage: 00d07a612db092c28c316244cce7d9199f23da33).
   Inside of them you will find another 256 folders named 00-ff, and inside those are your files, also with the long hash (garbage) names.
4. I have created the below script, that will:
   - sort your files into target folders by type, and add their correct extensions
   - decode the Apple Binary Property Lists and SQLite databases, so that you can view and search them in clear text! (databases will also be copied there besides the dump if you want to open and query them!)
5. You will need bash, sqlite3 and plistutil to run it, either on your Linux, or for windows: use the Linux subsystem in Windows 10, Cygwin on earlier versions of Windows.
6. Please do not forget to replace the backup folder name and the target directory name with yours!

#!/bin/bash
#
# Created to compare speed and compression on a VM image
# to be run in the VM working directory e.g. /mnt/d/VMs
#

# Find the utils we will need
if ! which sqlite3 >/dev/null; then echo "Please install sqlite3 to dump database file contents!"; exit; fi
if ! which plistutil >/dev/null; then echo "Please install sqlite3 to dump database file contents!"; exit; fi

# Identify file types
# Put target directory here!
TDIR="/mnt/c/Users//Desktop/iPhone6.HU"
mkdir -p "$TDIR/Pictures/JPEGs/" "$TDIR/Pictures/PNGs/" "$TDIR/Text/" "$TDIR/XML/" "$TDIR/PDF/" "$TDIR/PlistToXML/" "$TDIR/Database/" "$TDIR/Audio/" "$TDIR/Contacts/" "$TDIR/Pictures/TIFFs/" "$TDIR/Fonts/" "$TDIR/Others/" "$TDIR/Movies/"
 
# Put your backup folder here!
file --no-pad /mnt/c/Users//AppData/Roaming/Apple\ Computer/MobileSync/Backup//*/* |

while read
do
  SRC="${REPLY%%:*}"
  FLNAME="${SRC##*/}"
  case "${REPLY#*: }" in
  (JPEG*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Pictures/JPEGs/$FLNAME.jpg"
    ;;
  (PNG*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Pictures/PNGs/$FLNAME.png"
    ;;
  (ASCII\ text*|*Unicode\ text*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Text/$FLNAME.txt"
    ;;
  (XML\ document\ text*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/XML/$FLNAME.xml"
    ;;
  (PDF*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/PDF/$FLNAME.pdf"
    ;;
  (Apple\ binary\ property*)
    plistutil -i "$SRC" -o "$TDIR/PlistToXML/$FLNAME.xml"
    ;;
  (SQLite\ 3*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Database/$FLNAME.sqlite"
    sqlite3 "$SRC" .dump >"$TDIR/Database/$FLNAME.sql"
    ;;
  (MPEG-4\ LOAS*|*AAC*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Audio/$FLNAME.aac"
    ;;
  (vCard*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Contacts/$FLNAME.vcard"
    ;;
  (TIFF*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Pictures/TIFFs/$FLNAME.tiff"
    ;;
  (TrueType*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Fonts/$FLNAME.ttf"
    ;;
  (*QuickTime\ movie*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Movies/$FLNAME.mov"
    ;;
  (*)
    cp --preserve --no-clobber "$SRC" "$TDIR/Others/$FLNAME"
  esac
done
 
Sample output folder:

Enjoy!

Should you add more interesting file types, please add them in the comments section!

How to transfer iPhone (SMS) messages to Excel

It's very easy to get your messages out of your iPhone:

1. Create a backup of your iPhone on your computer, that is _not_ encrypted (as described here)
2. Find the files of your backup:
   
   • on Windows 8.x and 10 it is here: c:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
   • on Windows 7 and Vista: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
   • on Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup 
   • on OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
3. Each backup name is a 40 character long SHA (seems like garbage: 00d07a612db092c28c316244cce7d9199f23da33).
   Inside of them you will find another 256 folders named 00-ff, and inside those are your files, also with the long hash (garbage) names.
4. Go into the folder '3d', find the file 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28
5. Copy it for example to your desktop, rename it to: 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28.sqlite
6. Download the free and open-source SQLite database browser: http://sqlitebrowser.org/
7. Install it, start it and open the .sqlite file from your desktop.
8. Go to the Execute SQL tab, and enter:
   select  chat.last_addressed_handle,
           chat.chat_identifier,
           datetime(message.date + strftime('%s', '2001-01-01 00:00:00'),'unixepoch', 'localtime') as date,
           message.text,
           message.service
   from chat, chat_message_join,message
   where chat_message_join.chat_id=chat.ROWID and chat_message_join.message_id=message.ROWID
   order by last_addressed_handle,chat_identifier,date;
9. Now you should get a table with 5 columns (from which phone, to which number, date, text and service) and as many rows as many messages you have saved in the backup!
10. Save them as CSV:
    
11. Now you can open that with Excel!

Extra step, if you have messages with international characters: you need to add three bytes (the UTF8-BOM) to the beginning of the file for Excel to recognize this:

• You can either open the file with Notepad++ and save it as UTF-8-BOM as you see it in the screenshot

• Or if you have bash, use this command line to add it:
  echo -ne "\xEF\xBB\xBF"|cat - iphone-messages.csv > iphone-messages-BOM.csv

 Enjoy!

Feel free to modify or extend the SQL to suit your needs, please post in the comments if you have a cool new one!