hp said:
I was rooting around the wife's laptop, (its older so it only has a
40giggle HD) and noticed that it needed a little cleaning out because
after some years of using it she was getting closer to 10% free space.
One of the things I found was that we had updated it as time went along
and she now has IE8 in it when she needs to visit the MS updates site.
But for some reason there seems to be the IE 7 folder and the IE7updates
folder still in the main windows folder of win XP.
Since the laptop seems to be using IE 8 are the IE 7 folders delete-able
with out running into any problems?
Thanks!
Folders like that exist, if you need to uninstall the browsers.
You don't want to delete them, depending on your maintenance strategy.
One thing you should be aware of, is the ability to "repair install"
your OS, is a function of the version of IE you're using. Microsoft
warns, that before attempting a repair install, that you uninstall
the browsers that did not exist when the OS installer CD was
originally used. On WinXP, that would mean removing IE8 and IE7,
before returning to IE6. Then, you could pop in the CD and do a
Repair Install. (Repair Install doesn't remove user data or programs,
it mainly makes sure the OS files are all there. The registry would
be preserved, because the installed programs rely on that.)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917964
Now, that simply isn't a practical suggestion. If the computer is
"broken" and you can't boot, that's not exactly the time
you'll be removing the modern browsers IE8 and IE7, before attempting
repair. What you need at that point, is a recipe that is guaranteed
to work.
As a consequence of that "feature" from the good folks at Microsoft,
all I can recommend is doing frequent backups. If your WinXP machine
with IE8 installed, is broken one day, go grab the backup you made
last week and reinstall it.
So in the unlikely event, you "want" to do a repair install, but
aren't being "forced" to do it, you'll have the option of
going to Add/Remove and removing IE8 or IE7 or both. But if you
were thinking WinXP was "ready to be repair installed at any time",
no, Microsoft has botched that. In which case, as users, all we
can rely on, is backups to keep things going under all circumstances.
So a strategy might be:
1) Make a backup (to an external USB drive perhaps).
Make sure the backup works, and that you know how to use it.
For example, put a replacement drive in the laptop, and test
that you can restore to the replacement drive, and the laptop
works to your satisfaction. Do not go past this step, until
you're absolutely sure.
If your laptop only has the one drive, it's pretty hard to
"safely test" that the backup scheme works properly. The
NTBackup program that comes with the OS, makes me kinda nervous.
You have to be careful, if that is your only backup program,
to select the right options.
A third-party backup program will do a better job.
2) Now, delete anything that gets in your way. Have a picnic.
3) If the machine is broken by step (2), do a restore. Then,
repeat the "safe" steps that didn't break anything.
*******
If this all sounds like too much work, and being too careful, there
is another option.
Get yourself a copy of Sequoiaview. It reads all the file sizes on a partition,
and presents them as rectangles. Holding a mouse over a rectangle, displays
the file name on the bar at the bottom of the window.
http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview//
I use that as a quick way, to survey the partition for oversized files. It's
the quickest way to find something worth deleting or moving. For example, if
I downloaded a CD or DVD and it's hogging space on C:, I can easily find it
that way.
The download is on this page:
http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/o...sualization/sequoiaview/download_sequoiaview/
There will be some large files on C:, such as "pagefile.sys" and
"hiberfil.sys", but they're part of the operation of your computer
and should not be removed. Pagefile will be re-created on the next
boot, even if you did manage to delete it. The message here, is don't
waste your time on those two files. Pagefile can be adjusted in size,
with the appropriate control panel setting, so it can be forced to
take up less space. Setting it to zero, isn't the best value. If
you were in a pinch for space, set it to around 300MB or so. That's
the estimated amount of content during system startup, that gets
evicted to the pagefile early on. A setting of zero, is only of
academic interest (yes, I've done it, but only as a "stupid pet trick").
Another way to save space, is to change the System Restore max
space setting. By default, my machine uses 8GB of space for
System Restore points, and it takes about four months before
it balloons to that size and uses all that space. Once it hits
8GB, the older restore points are deleted, when the new ones
are written.
You can adjust the System Restore settings (in the System control
panel), to a lesser file size. I adjusted mine down from
8GB to 3GB, which still leaves room for enough (practical)
Restore points to be useful. Saving 5GB of easy space for
future usage. That's probably enough to get you out of there
and on to the next thing.
Click on C:, then "Settings" and adjust the value. If I
dial down from 8GB to 3GB, and save the changes, the system
should immediately throw away 5GB of the oldest restore points.
http://xpnotes.com/uploads/sysrestoresettings.png
The thing is, a four month old System Restore point, is of
no value to me. I don't want the computer to ever "go backwards
four months". I wouldn't mind if the system state had to go
back a week, to perhaps before I did that last Windows Update
or something. So an excessive size for System Restore, is just
a waste. You only need a setting big enough, to save your
bacon on a short time horizon.
One other thing to check, is the Internet Explorer cache size.
Now, my brother had this problem on a computer. He made the
mistake, of bumping up the setting on the cache, thinking it
would be a big win. There were *so* many files in the cache
folder, that it was slowing the computer to a crawl. Any time
the system would get near that folder (and find hundred of thousands
or millions of files), the machine would become useless. He had
it set that way, because at the time he was working daily, doing
data mining on the web, and thought it would be a useful setting.
But instead, it was shooting him in the foot. Most people
probably wouldn't manage to find that setting, so it's not
an issue.
Those are examples of things I'd look for, before hammering
$NTUninstall type folders.
If I was working on a netbook, and had an SSD of limited size,
I might be forced to clean out *everything*. In which case,
purchasing XPLite might be an option. I've never used this.
It's supposed to be a testament to the fact the OS is modular,
and can be managed at the module level, for trimming installed
size and removing features. But you'd have to be pretty
desperate to do this. I'd sooner just buy a netbook with
hardware upgrade options, so larger storage can be installed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xplite
HTH,
Paul
