what can safely be thrown away under xp sp2 for a typical user ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marcel Verduyn
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M

Marcel Verduyn

dear ng,
I have installed windows xp sp2 (home edition)
the windows directory is huge (about 3 Gb) !!!
I am looking for suggestions what can safely be thrown away - programs a
typical user like me won't use
(typical=e-mail, www, office)
thanks and best regards, Marcel
 
Marcel: 3GB is about right for XP. To be brutally frank, what you need
to 'throw away' is your desire to mess with your computer's operating
system.
 
Hi,
I do agree with the statement `never touch a working system' ... but is
really everything needed ?
alternatively, is there possibility to move certain xp dirs to another
partition/hdd ?
regards, Marcel
 
dear ng,
I have installed windows xp sp2 (home edition)
the windows directory is huge (about 3 Gb) !!!
Click to expand...


To put that word "huge" into perspective, in these days of big
expensive hard drives, that 3GB of hard drive space is about $3.00
(US) worth. Really very little, and 3GB by no means unusual.

Unless you are very short of disk space, I wouldn't worry about this
at all. And if you are so short of disk space that saving at best a
portion of 3GB would make a big difference to you, you have much more
severe problems, and urgently need a new bigger hard drive. Anything
else you do will be just a stopgap measure.

I am looking for suggestions what can safely be thrown away - programs a
typical user like me won't use
(typical=e-mail, www, office)
Click to expand...


That's a very difficult question for anyone here to answer, for two
reasons:

1. We have no idea what's installed on your computer.

2. There's really no such thing as a typical user. We all have
different needs and desires, and what I find useless may be your
favorite program--and vice versa.

You need to look for yourself to see what you have installed. If
there's something there you don't use, by all means uninstall it. But
don't expect to substantially reduce that 3GB.
 
Hi again:

Have a look at Control Panel > Add or Remove Software > Add/Remove
Windows Components. If there's something you see that you don't think
you'll be using (Games, Wallpaper, etc.) then remove it, but don't think
you're going to gain a worthwhile amount of disk space from the
exercise. As Ken wrote, if you're so desperate for disk space that you
need to reduce your OS, what you really need is a bigger hard disk.

Which is not to say that there aren't reasons to reduce the size of your
system partition. One reason that immediately comes to mind is backing
up: If you're using disk imaging software to backup your system, and you
want the backups to run a little faster, there are things you can do to
help yourself. For example: Empty your Recycle Bin, clear your caches
and reduce the amount of disk space allocated to TIF, restore points and
the Recycle Bin. You can also move My Documents to its own partition,
which doesn't save any disk space but does reduce the size of your
system partition.
 
Geeez enough with the Quotes. The thread isnt that long. Yeah there is a
perfectly good reason to cut down Xp's footprint. CLUTTER. I have an old
Pentium III machine that im using as a dedicated server for multiplayer
games. Obviously I dont need things like OUTLOOK EXPRESS, MSN Games, i could
go on and on. So I used a program called XPlite to get rid of all that
unnecessary stuff. Theres no way i was going to invest in more HD space for
obvious reasons. try it out. Its easy to use and even allows you to get rid
of all those seperate Uninstaller files for all this updates and stuff you
dont need either.
 
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