[Question] Deleting archived files after service pack upgrade...

[nfanrekurb]

I know the installer archived some files before upgrading to sp1 and later 2 but now I am running out of space and would like someone to tell me how I clear these files. And if anybody got them tips to reduce the space windows is utilising even farther.

Edited May 5, 2006 by nfanrekurb

[snafumaster]

Depending on how many changes and how many updates you have installed since you installed these packs, they uninstall may not come out clean anyhow. Keep that in mind when deciding what to do. If you are using system restore, you may be saving too much stuff there too. If you are certain that your machine is running tip top and all of the recent changes you may have made (ie installing programs, software and hardware) are working fine, you may want to clean out old restore points and/or cutting back on the amount of space windows reserves for system restore. To cut back on the space reserved, right click my computer and select properties. Go to the "system restore" tab and slide back that slider to reserve less space and thereby let you have more for your uses. To clean out old resore points...all but the most recent...open my computer and right click the c:\ drive. On the general tab, click "disk cleanup" after it finishes the initial scan, go to the "more options" tab, there you will see the button for cleaning out old restore points. I would like to repeat, use this only if your machine is running well and you have no intentions of rolling back to any other point than the most recent. Those two steps can save you GIGs of space. Might not though, depends on how old your machine is and other things. I do the second one regularly. But I never plan on using system restore. I could turn it off all together, but it is a nice safety net and my sytems are beefy enough that the perfomance hit doesn't hurt me at all.

[Jeremy]

1. Turn off System Restore.

2. Resize your page file (set the initial value to the same as the maximum value). If you have 1GB or more RAM, it is safe to set your page file to 512MB.

3. C:\WINDOWS\$hf_mig$\*.*

4. C:\WINDOWS\KB######

5. C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution

5. C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles

6. C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch

Then use CCleaner latest version. Open, Analyze, Run.

I hope this helps.