[ChrisLHanssen]

From a 75gig hard drive I have I know have just 141mb of hard drive space and I need to free up some space. Would my removing any old Service Packs I have like Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 damage the operation of my computer? Any help would be nice. Thanks.

[Maurice]

Hi Chris, there are a few things that you can do to free up some space on your hard drive:

1. Open Windows Explorer and right click on C: choose Properties and click the 'Disk cleanup' button. Seelct items such as
Temporary Internet files
Offlien webpages
Recycle bin
Temporary files etc
leave compressing old files for now.

When that has finished you can happily delete the contents of these folders->
C:\temp (if it exists)
C:\Windows\Temp
C:\Windows\minidump (if it exists)
C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download (previously downloaded windows updates)

Inside the \Windows folder you will see a number of folders with names starting like $NTUninstallKB.....

Now you shouldn't really delete these as these are the hotfix uninstalls. Now if you can remember the date that you installed XP service pack 3 then you can safely delete all of these folders dated BEFORE that date.

If you expand C:\Documents and Settings you should see a folder for each user of the PC. Within each user's folder you will see \Local Settings\Temp - this folder can be emptied too.

Other things to do are uninstall and programs that you do not use.
Archive documents/photos etc from your 'My Documents' folder off to optical discs.
Do you have 'ripped' audio CDs on there? If so, can you remove them?

Let us know how it goes.

[macrobt]

yes, please let us know how much space you were able to save-always is nice to hear results and just not questions -

[ChrisLHanssen]

I can't find this thing:

Local Settings\Temp

But I now have 46.0mb as of this reply.

[Maurice]

Hi Chris, I guess that in Windows Explorer the option to see hidden & system files is turned off. What you do is load Windows Explorer then click on 'Tools' on the menu bar, then choose 'Folder Options' then click on the tab called 'View' now check the box 'Display the contents of system folders' a bit further down select the 'Show hidden files & folders' option. Click 'apply to all folders' and now you will be able to any hidden folders.

Next you can go a bit further down that list and there is an option 'Hide protected operating system files (recpmmended)' untick this and click ok. Now you will be able to see evrything on the drive so be careful that you do not delete and essential system files by mistake. Now you can go back over the list I posted earlier and have another go at deleting stuff.

A couple of other things you can do are:

1. If you have 'Hibernate' turned on then turn it off. Right click an empty part of the desktop and choose properties. Click on the 'Screensaver' tab and click on the 'power' button. Now click on the 'Hibernate' tab and uncheck 'enable hibernation'. If it had been on it will free up some disk space.

2. Reduce the amount of disk space allocated to 'System Restore' by default Windows uses upto 12% of the drives capacity and you can reduce this to say 8% and still keep System Recovery going. Go to Control Panel -> System and click the system restore tab. You can move the slider control to reduce the amount of space utilised. I would advise against turning System Restore off even tho it will free up even more space.