How can the size of user profiles be reduced?

[Neale D. Hind]

On our home PC, with XP Home, my family user profiles vary from 2MB to
36MB in size.

Mine is 455MB.

Is this typical?

The Internet seems somewhat short of explanations as to what a User
Profile is made up of and how it may be optimised/reduced in size.

Could anyone shed some light on this?

Cheers,

 

[Guest]

Clean Temporary Internet Files, Cookies and other temporary files:
http://www.fixyourwindows.com/optimizewindowstempfiles.htm

(If using Outlook Express) You could also delete unneeded email, and compact
folders (File -> Folder -> Compact All Folders).

Good Luck!
---
How to optimize Windows XP, 2000, ME
for the best performance (Step-by-step Visual Guide):
http://www.fixyourwindows.com

Spyware/Virus Removal and Prevention:
http://www.fixyourwindows.com/windowsxpsolutions.htm
(Links to online virus scans on the same page)

 

[Alex Nichol]

On our home PC, with XP Home, my family user profiles vary from 2MB to
36MB in size.

Mine is 455MB.

Is this typical?

The Internet seems somewhat short of explanations as to what a User
Profile is made up of and how it may be optimised/reduced in size.

A User Profile in Documents and Settings includes the User's My
Documents; My Music; My Pictures and even My Videos folders - so its
size is that of the proverbial piece of string.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Moving/redirecting My Documents to another folder on the computer
(c:\data\myname) would decrease the profile size....could be done for each
user accordingly, if this is desired. I usually do this even on
standalone/home PCs as I don't like using the profile folders for data
storage - easier to recover from disaster if there's a profile problem.

 

[Neale D. Hind]

A User Profile in Documents and Settings includes the User's My
Documents; My Music; My Pictures and even My Videos folders - so its
size is that of the proverbial piece of string.

ooops - all rather embarrassing really. I had a dodgy cd-rw and had
recovered all the usable files (some 400MB) from it to a folder on my
desktop.

Now moved to a more appropriate place and my profile back to an
understandable size.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

LOL...well, at least you found the culprit.

Might want to google "TreeSize Pro" - it's a nice little utility that does
stuff Explorer should do by default. It's on my metaphorical "desert island
software" CD.