Streamlining Windows XP Home

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Guest

Hi,

I use Windows XP Home SP1 and have a few questions.

I am short on disk space and have been looking
for things that I can delete to streamline my
version of Windows. While looking, I came across
several files/folders that take up a lot of
space. I want to know the purpose of them,
and whether it is OK to delete them. They are:

(257MB) "C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\"

(123MB) "C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\"

(73MB) "C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\driver.cab"

(12.5MB) "C:\WINDOWS\system32\oembios.bin"

(~10MB) "C:\WINDOWS\java\"
- If I delete this and then install Sun's
Java2 Runtime Edtion, will Java still work?

(~9.5MB) "C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\sp1.cab"

(~5MB) "C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSJAVX86.EXE"
- I assume it is safe to delete this since this
is just an installer for Microsoft's Java
Virtual Machine.

(~2MB) "C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB823980$"
- I presume this is related to un-installing
the Windows XP Hotfix - KB823980. If I don't
want to un-install it can I delete this
folder ?

I have already tried deleting these and
Windows still seems to run OK. I just wanted
to check why they are there and what they do.
 
Richie--

I'll leave these specific files for someone else to address, but the two
perennieal chief space hogs in Windows are System Restore and Recycle Bin.
Don't turn off System Restore, because that will delete your restore points
if you do, but MS has defaulted System Restore on any of your drives to 12%.
In some discussions on their sites, MS has said SR defaults to 90 days and
can be adjusted via the registry, but I have not seen this many restore
points that far back on any machine. However, there are 5 default
situations where new restore points are automatically made, so you should be
able to


Adjust System Restore's Size:

Put up System Properties by pressing the Windows and Pause Break Key and
adjust the lever down for each drive you have on the System Restore tab by
clicking the "Settings" button. You could probably do very well to have the
lever at 6% or even 3% and have adequate restore points and this would give
you a tangible amount of space back.

Reduce Recycle Bin's Size:

http://home.earthlink.net/~leetutor/DoWin/Desktop/adjustrb.htm

A convenient useful download for mapping the real-estate occupied by
different files is from an Amsterdam group, DVXP:

http://www.dvxp.com/en/Downloads.aspx
____________________________________________

Chad Harris

_________________________________________________________________________
 
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