Not much of one if you do not need to uninstall the patches. Not
much of one even if you do have to uninstall the patches, I
believe. It's really the "$" directories that matter then. So - I
would say - troubleshooting the changes the patches made may be
made more difficult if you erase these files.
If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can
delete the uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has
installed...
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm
You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but
your latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..
How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312
You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..
When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the
system's memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of
the hiberfil.sys file will always equal the amount of physical
memory in your system. If you don't use the hibernate feature and
want to recapture the space that Windows uses for the hiberfil.sys
file, perform the following steps:
- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start,
Settings, Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check
box, then click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting
Never under the "System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab
doesn't delete the hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power
Schemes tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.
You can control how much space your System Restore can use...
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and
click on the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I
suggest moving the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or
close to that...) 5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.
You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can
utilize...
Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores
to a size between 64MB and 128MB..
- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section,
do the following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:"
to something between 64MB and 128MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline
contents" (the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this
could take 2-10 minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open
Internet Explorer.
You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:
Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Other ways to free up space..
SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/
JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html
Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being
used.
If you are concerned over less than 5GB of space total at any given
time being freed up on your hard disk drive - then something is
wrong and you would be better off spending a little and putting in a drive
that is likely 3-8 times as large as what you have not and not
concerning yourself over such a small amount of space OR you seriously
need
to consider what you really need on the system and what should be
archived.
Basic housekeeping 101... - in an actual home, if your storage area
gets full - you either have to decide what you really should have
in the storage area and what could go or you have to find a new
place to store stuff that will accommodate everything you need. You don't
walk into a
warehouse of cars, look at the filing cabinet in the corner where
you keep all the records for the cars and decide that if you move
it out of the warehouse - you will have more room for cars. ;-)
