Hi, Julian,
You are doing a marathon task of locating the manifest files from the winsxs folder , manifest. Hats off to you for your sincere effort. It is not easy. I have seen threads about your helpful link in this forum quoted in sevenforums.
The try to locate those files in COMPONENT, in HKLM is not that easy as mostly this folder is not default present in the registry in the said folder. You have to load the module. But, how to get those files without manifest extension is also a cumbersome and tedious process.
In a nutshell, i find manifest are xml designed to operate windows and third party window operations, like dll in xp version. It is improvised method of avoiding dll missing from so many suspicious sites. But locating the same is a very difficult task, as these files have to be located machine specific, version specific. Thanks . I find manifest files attachments in some of your help posts