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Programs with installers typically install to the Program Files folder, but there's a lot of portable/self-contained software out there now. If you download such a program, it goes to wherever you have your browser set to download stuff..... which is presumably NOT to your Program Files folder. While it probably doesn't matter where you download it to for initially inspecting/testing the program to see if you want to keep it, from an organizational point of view it probably doesn't make sense to leave it there forever. So what do you do with portable programs you decide to keep? Do you move them to your Program Files folder (or perhaps create a 'Portable Apps' folder within the Program Files folder and keep them all together) and manually make shortcuts to them? If not, what do you do?

@alacran Everything you suggested above is how my system was set up from the beginning (using the same reasoning), except that the OS isn't on C:, but D:, a logical partition. My C: is a tiny FAT32 partition with nothing but the boot files. My OS image is small and can be recovered in no time. I did a lot of research before installing XP permanently, and am very happy with the results. With that in mind, and I know this is the XP forum, I sure would like to know how to achieve the same thing (small image size) in Windows 7. I'll probably have to start a new topic for it in the 7 forum. With 7's giant WinSxS folder (and 7 just being a bigger install than XP in general), it seems impossible to make a small OS image that can be restored quickly. Back to XP. All that being said, for the subject of this topic, I don't think it matters if your system is set up 'ideally' or if it's all just dumped on one partition. If your My Documents folder has a bunch of stuff in it your user profile size is going to be huge. Move that stuff out, the profile size is smaller, but now that stuff is elsewhere. No big deal either way, as space isn't an issue for me... I just didn't understand why the user profile size was so large until I kind of became more educated about it over the last week.

I've continued to mess around with this. As stated, my user profile was 3.58 GB in size. I did a little HDD reorganizing, and it grew to 3.78 GB. NTUSER.dat was 3,072 KB. As mentioned above, My Documents was over 7.5 GB. I took everything in it and moved it to a temporary folder outside of my user name folder, but still on the same partition. As a result, my user profile size shrank to 194 MB. I also used a shellbag cleaner, and NT Registry Optimizer, and afterwards NTUSER.dat shrank by exactly half, to 1,536 KB. I then took everything from the temporary folder and put it back in My Documents, and my profile size was right back up at 3.78 GB. So.... unless someone can offer insight to the contrary, I'd say that the "user profile" size is pretty pointless. It just means you have a bunch of stuff in your profile folder Great, that's what I thought it was for! If I move that stuff outside of my profile folder, whether it's 100 MB or several GB, the profile size drastically shrinks.... but that just means that that stuff is now located somewhere else. I have my lossless music collection on a separate HDD. If I had it stored in my profile's My Music folder, I guess my profile size would be almost a TB in size.

Well, if it *is* the norm, then mine is 4x the norm, and I'd like to know why. Looking thru Google Images I saw one profile that was 21 GB, and another that was over 60 GB..... and plenty of others that were under 1 MB. https://www.google.com/search?q="windows+xp"+"user+profile"+size&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit-bL_-OzUAhWBLyYKHV--Bb0Q_AUIBigB&biw=1600&bih=773 Look at the description at the top of the User Settings box when you get to it as I described above: "User profiles store settings for your desktop and other information related to your user account." That's a pretty vague statement. How can any of that "stuff" add up to over 60 GB?

Right-click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab > User Profiles > Settings My profile is the only one there and it says it's over 3.5 GB in size. What things contribute to a profile's overall size? If I go to to the Documents & Settings folder and then right-click the folder with my name on it, it's almost 7.5 GB in size. Within it, Downloads is 6 GB, and another folder I created is just over 1 GB, so those 2 folders account for almost the entire size of the <my name> folder inside of the Documents & Settings folder. Everything else in it - 13 folders and 276 files, is 378 MB, so how is Windows determining that my profile is 3.5 GB in size?

Did some poking around on my PC at things I don't normally look at regularly and noticed that the single profile on my PC is 3.58 GB in size. Did some Googling and saw advice about not downloading things directly to your desktop, temp files, Outlook Express files, and stuff in Local Settings in the user profile folder. My desktop is 99% shortcuts and a few tiny text files. Never used Outlook, ever. My temp files were redirected to another partition when XP was installed and are empty. The entire Documents & Settings folder was redirected to another partition when XP was installed. I just checked, and the Application Data folder is just under 200 MB, and Local Settings is just under 100 MB. What else would account for my profile being so large?

Thanks for the lesson. Followup Q: With what you said above in mind, when you access a GPT HDD in Disk Management in order to create 1 or more partitions, are the Extended/Logical options either grayed out or not made available at all? Is the only option to create "a partition" because in GPT a partition is a partition is a partition?

Another Q: If I set up the 3TB HDD in a GPT scheme, is the creating & formatting of partitions through Disk Management still the same? If it is, then since this is going to be a data-only HDD, say I don't create any primary partitions on it, thus there are no partitions to be marked as active, and I make the whole thing 1 or more Logicals inside an Extended.....and I don't connect this HDD to the system until after I've installed Win 7 on the SSD. Would this minimize the chance of any booting issues?

@Tripredacus Yes, I *did* use the new PC's boot menu option to select my USB flash drive in order to install Win 7 off of it (on the older HDD I mentioned above).... and it was the only HDD connected at the time. I'll do the same in the future with the SSD before adding the 3TB drive. I mentioned that in my initial post. That being said, after I had 7 installed and working (this was a few weeks ago), I went back to the boot menu at start up because I thought I saw something I wasn't sure of, but ignored it at that time because I wasn't selecting it at that point. It was the UEFI Shell option. I've since gone back and selected it, and it brings up a command line interface. I had no clue what to do even to poke just around in it, so I typed 'help' and saw a flurry of stuff go by and was only able to see the last third or half of it after the screen stopped scrolling. The "/p" switch didn't work like in DOS, and I didn't know what to type to get it to stop after a page of info, so I just exited out of it. @cdob I worded my last post poorly. I'm aware that there are Win 7 drivers on AsRock's site. I used several of them during my install. Regarding adding a UEFI boot environment to my USB disk, I did that as a test using the Rufus USB installer. When I booted from the USB flash drive, I got to the screen where I could pick which partition to install to, and for each one I got a message that the partition or disk were not of the right type. I expected that. The HDD was MBR, and it was looking for GPT. I plan on using Win 7 for as long as possible. It may be the last version of Windows I use. I also downloaded a 10 ISO and installed it and played around with it for a week. Just didn't like it. No experience with 8. I plan on eventually dual booting this new PC with some variety of Linux.

Thanks for the replies so far. As a reminder, I don't work in the PC industry in any way; I'm just a detail-oriented and techno-minded home user. To me, UEFI means "fancy BIOS screens with a fancy background.... and you can use your mouse." At this point my knowledge doesn't go beyond that. I hit F2/delete during POST and I'm in it and looking around. For this build I decided to go AMD Ryzen. My mobo is an AsRock AB350M Pro4: http://asrock.com/mb/AMD/AB350M Pro4/index.asp I'm looking at a PDF of the manual as I type this. Under BIOS Features, it says it has an "AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support." It has a lot of options, some of which I have no idea what they are. There is a CSM entry, and it's enabled. It says not to disable it unless a WHCK test is being run. Underneath the CSM entry are the following: Launch PXE OpROM Policy, Launch Storage OpROM Policy, & Launch Video OpROM Policy. Al are set to "legacy." Is this enough info to tell you 'how' I'm booting? As I mentioned in my initial post, I don't have my SSD yet, so in order to play around with my new hardware I hooked up an older SATA HDD that has a small FAT primary partition and several OS-sized logical partitions on it (jaclaz, I've read about and used your partitioning/boot strategies), and installed Win 7 from USB on one of them. The info in the link above to the mobo says is designed for Win 10 only, but I had no trouble getting 7 installed. This HDD was obviously originally set up in a MBR scheme. I had assumed that I was booting with UEFI just because of how the background screen looked and because I had my mouse available. Then I came across this on How-To-Geek about using UEFI instead of the BIOS, and confused myself a bit more: https://www.howtogeek.com/175649/what-you-need-to-know-about-using-uefi-instead-of-the-bios/ It talks about accessing the UEFI options from within Windows 8 & 10. I know I'm running 7, and it mentions a legacy BIOS mode for older OSes, but I'm not seeing any options for that when I was poking around. Probably because the mobo was designed for 10 only?

I'm confused about this based on something I read in the Windows and GPT FAQ on MSDN. I'm building a new PC and already have everything except the SSD that I'll be installing the OS on (Win 7 x64). Since I'll be getting a smaller SSD (probably 256 GB or smaller), I assumed I'd set it up with a MBR scheme. My data-only HDD will be 3 TB, and I thought I had to set it up with a GPT scheme because of its size. My confusion lies in what I read here, regarding using both MBR & GPT disks on the same system: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn640535(v=vs.85).aspx#gpt_faq_mixed_gpt_mbr "Systems that support UEFI (mine does) require that boot partition must reside on a GPT disk. Other hard disks can be either MBR or GPT." Is this accurate, or am I interpreting it incorrectly? My 3 TB drive is going to be data-only. I have ZERO experience with GPT. My plan was to install Win 7 from USB to the SSD, and after it's set up to my liking I'd add in the 3 TB drive. What will happen if I do this? Based on the info from the link above, I'm interpreting it to mean that the system will look to the 3 TB drive for a boot partition, not find one, and then potentially not boot. Some clarification about this would be appreciated. Thanks.

I thought that was debunked? I believe it's possible to install Windows 7 and 8.1, but that there are issues using Windows Update, or Microsoft Update, or whatever it's called.

I haven't been on the forum much in the last year, and it seems like the traffic has really slowed down on several subforums. I thought for sure I'd see some Ryzen talk now that it's mid-April, but there's nothing. No one wants to be an early adopter? Waiting for more motherboards to be released? BIOSes to be improved? What's the deal?

Thanks. Your "live recording & watching" analogy explains it. Their PC is a Pentium 4. And I did have their Task Manager open and the CPU was at 70% the entire time. And thanks for the tips on how to set T.V. up for unattended access. I can see how that would be useful.

OK, I tried using Team Viewer for the first time today. My mom called about some issue, so I figured we may as well fire it up see if it worked. It did. She gave me her ID & password, and :::POOF:::, I was looking at her desktop. I ended up updating their Flash player, Firefox and a couple extensions, and got into their display properties and changed the text size for their icons and menus. The only 'issue' I found was that it was a little slow/laggy. Is that normal? Windows Explorer seemed like it took 3+ seconds to open, and Firefox was 10+ seconds. It wasn't horrible, just a little annoying. It was still 1,000,000x better than trying to explain to her what to do herself.

I'll definitely report back. I have Team Viewer installed on both PCs, but I haven't tested it yet because I only have a wired connection to the internet, no router. My parent's PC is going back to them tomorrow, so hopefully I can test things out soon.

Thanks for the replies. We both have XP Pro SP3. I will look into Team Viewer immediately. In hindsight, I should have asked if there were better options besides Remote Assistance/Desktop in the first place. Thanks for the tips.

My parents live an hour away, and when they have issues with their PC they call me and I try to fix things over the phone. The problem is that they know NOTHING about computers and can't describe anything with terms I can understand, and it takes forever to diagnose and fix things. I'd like to be able to maintain/fix their computer without so much fuss, so I was hoping to do it with Remote Assistance/Desktop. If I could just see their PC I could take care of their issues in 1/100th the time it takes over the phone. I have their PC right now because I couldn't fix their last problem over the phone, so since it's here I'd like to get it set up so I can access it from my place when they have issues in the future, i.e. next week! I've never used Remote Assistance/Desktop before so I don't know where to begin. Which one do I use, Assistance or Desktop? I would assume Assistance, but without knowing more it looks like it could be done with either. I've never used either so I don't know where to begin and could use some guidance. We both have XP SP3. I know how to access them, but how do I set them up? What is the "name" of their PC? Is it the "registered to" name from My Computer > Properties? I don't know where to start. Please help.

OK, I just installed FF versions 9, 11, 16, & 24, and none of the videos from the links in my first post played. They looked the same as they do in FF v45. I'm not imagining things. I'm 100% sure that I used to play videos from both those sites on FF, and the only way I ever accessed them was through the sports website in my first post. So same question as I ended my last post with - did those sites change their video format from what they were using 9+ months ago?

No, it doesn't. And apologies - it was a complete false alarm on my part. Vivaldi installed on XP does in fact NOT play the videos in the links in my first post. I have Win 7 configured to look much like XP, and in my haste to see how Vivaldi would work I absentmindedly installed and ran it on Win 7 last night, not XP. It does work perfectly on 7. Nice browser too, I like it. Stuff loads noticeably faster than with FF. Back to the issue though. Dencorso, I understand what you said earlier, that FF relies on Windows Media Foundation and that XP doesn't have it..... but why did videos from Twitter and Streamable work on FF at one time (maybe 9 months ago)? Did those sites change their video format?

Hmm. I just downloaded & installed Vivaldi (also in a Sandbox), and the videos from my first post played perfectly. Interesting. I'd never heard of the Vivaldi browser before, but I see it's related to Opera. I was a big Opera user back in the day but migrated to FF as Opera seemed to go in a direction I didn't care for. From what I briefly read, it looks like Vivaldi is kind of the modern version of what Opera used to be. Might be time for another migration. I'll have to play around with it for a while first, though.

Let's say I did have the same results as you. What are you saying - that my option would be to use Chrome? That won't work for me unless it can be visually customized (I don't mean themes, I mean UI ergonomics). I imported my FF bookmarks but I had to access them way over on the right side of the browser. That alone made using it really annoying.

Went to the test page. With FF the first video didn't work as you predicted, but the others did. Downloaded and installed Chrome inside Sandboxie and all the videos played. Then tried the links from my first post in Chrome. The videos from Streamable didn't show the actual video on the webpage, but a gray box with an icon in the middle of it with an unhappy face. Presumably that means "you ain't gonna see nothin' here... sorry!" The Twitter videos didn't show on the webpage either, but showed the link to the video on Twitter. Upon clicking those links, I got the same message over and over: "amp.twimg.com normally uses encryption to protect your information. When Google Chrome tried to connect to amp.twimg.com this time, the website sent back unusual and incorrect credentials. This may happen when an attacker is trying to pretend to be amp.twimg.com, or a Wi-Fi sign-in screen has interrupted the connection. Your information is still secure because Google Chrome stopped the connection before any data was exchanged. You cannot visit amp.twimg.com right now because the website uses HSTS. Network errors and attacks are usually temporary, so this page will probably work later." What do my test results mean?

I don't have a Twitter account nor do I use it in any way except to watch videos that are embedded on the sports website I go to to see game highlights. Videos from Twitter & Streamable used to play with FF. The one thing I haven't done is to go back to an earlier version of FF to see if they still work, but maybe that's my next step. edit: dencorso, we posted at about the same time. I'll try what you suggested and post back. Thanks.

This has been going on for some time and I still haven't found a solution on my own, so I'm asking here. I've done the obvious, like creating a fresh Firefox profile without any add-ons, but no luck. Using the same version of 32-bit Firefox (currently v44.0.2), short videos from Twitter & Streamable.com play without issue when I'm on Win 7, but the same videos won't play if I'm on XP. If I press 'play' on the Streamable.com videos they just sit there. On the Twitter videos it says "This browser does not support video playback." Streamable.com examples: http://www.cbssports.com/soccer/eye-on-soccer/25505347/watch-arsenal-spurs-produce-crazy-memorable-derby-clash http://www.cbssports.com/soccer/eye-on-soccer/25505422/watch-ronaldo-scores-four-to-pass-messi-reach-these-milestones Twitter examples: http://www.cbssports.com/soccer/eye-on-soccer/25506528/watch-messi-opens-his-bag-of-tricks-with-panenka-style-penalty-kick-goal http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/25505552/watch-jose-bautista-left-handed-slugger Any thoughts?