Clearing Space On XP Pro Hard Drive

[Mike48]

I have an old Gateway M505XL laptop with a 60GB hard drive that runs well on XP Pro but is down to 9GB free space. I downloaded and used TreeSizeFree to analyze the drive and wound up with several areas that are full of files that may be removable:
12GB in WINNT/CSC Folder (my laptop synchs My Documents with the server at work & enables offline files)
7GB in System Volume Info/Restore Points
1.6GB in Recycler
Dozens of multi-MB $NTUninstall files (I believe in WINNT)

Which of these files can be safely removed? What is the best to remove them? What exactly are the large files in the CSC folder?

Thanks for your help.

 

[techkid]

I don't know at all about that WINNT\CSC folder that you are referring to. But I do believe that you should hang on to the $NTUninstallKBXXXXXX$ folders (they refer to the updates you receive or download from Microsoft).

Windows provides a pretty basic utility with XP - Disk Cleanup (go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools). It will clean out things like Temporary Files, the IE cache and suchlike. You could probably salvage about 512MB-1GB using it.

 

[padutch]

Be careful with WINNT files . On my one PC running XP Pro the operating system is C:\WINNT and is not C:\Windows . On my other PC running XP Pro the operating system is C:\Windows . But the op should only use about 4 gigs at most .

 

[flavallee]

Right-click MY COMPUTER, click Properties - System Restore, move the slider from its default value of 12% to 3%, then click Apply - OK.

Right-click RECYCLE BIN, click Properties, move the slider from its default value of 10% to 2%, then click Apply - OK.

Restart your computer.

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Delete all files and folders from inside these 2 TEMP folders:

C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\(USERNAME)\LOCAL SETTINGS\TEMP

Empty the Recycle Bin and then restart your computer again.

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