XP-SP3 installed ... C drive free space reduced drastically

I have a Compaq laptop with a 80 GB hard disc, of which C drive is 15 GB. The OS has been XP-Pro SP2, and generally, about 50% space (7 to 8 GB) in C drive used to remain free.

I have just installed SP3, and find free space at only 3 GB. In other words, 4 GB seems to have been lost to SP3 installation process. After installation of SP3, OS has been fully patched, vetted by Secunia.
I have also used CCleaner, but it cleaned few MBs.

The broad breakdown of the used space of 12 GB is as follows :-

a) Windows 6.6 GB
b) Program files 2.4 GB
c) Documents & Settings 1 GB : I don't use MyDocuments, and this contains only my OE mails.

I am attaching a file showing the folder details of C drive.

Any advice to reclaim lost space will be very appreciated.

Thanks,

 

It's been awhile since I have done this, so what I'm about to say may not be 100% verbatim.....

First off, make sure you have "Show hidden files and folders" enabled in the folder properties. Go into the Windows folder. You should see a whole mess of folders that show the text in blue that start with a "$". One of them, or several of them, should say something like "Service Pack" for the name after the "$". Those are the folders that store the "uninstall" components for your recently installed Service Pack.

If you wish to do so, delete the corresponding folders. By doing this though, you will make the installation of SP3 permanent. SP3 will not be able to be uninstalled. So you must decide if that is something you wish to do.

You should gain a fair amount of space back from deleting those folders. The other folders in there that have a "$" in the front of them are the uninstall folders for all of the Windows Updates you have done previously. You can delete those too, but once again that will make any Windows Updates you have done permanent. You will not be able to uninstall them.

I've had to do this in the past to gain back disk space. You should gain a minimum of a couple of GB back, depending upon how many updates you've applied.

 

Thanks for your response, and guiding to the "disposable" folders. Since MS is not going to provide patches for SP2 in a couple of months, SP3 has to be made permanent I think.

Just a curiosity - to create space in future, and yet not totally delete "uninstallable patches" for SP3, can such folders be moved to an external HD or other media, so that in case the need arises, they can be brought back to C drive?

Thanks again,

 

You can do that. Just make sure you don't run any kind of registry cleaner after you move the blue folders to their new temporary home. The registry cleaner (CCleaner for example) will remove the referrence to the uninstall folders in the registry. If you then put them back in the Windows folder and try uninstalling the patches through Add/Remove Programs, it will most likely fail.

 

There's a utility you can use which does what Keith suggested and it's so much easier. It's called TuneUp 20xx and it comes with a full blown 30 day trial period. You can view the space taken up by patch backups and such and it deletes and reclaims all of that space for you. It also has a registry cleaner to but CCleaner will find all of that stuff.

When I was using XP I found this utility very useful.

 

IF you do regular backups then you can delete all your restore points. These, at least from what I personally find, consume at least 2-3gb of space for my system over time- when I was using an platter HDD as a main drive.

I'm no longer on XP but from what I remember..

1. Right Click on C: and choose properties
2. Choose disk cleanup
3. The menu with choices of what to delete will come up.
4. There should be two tabs on that menu. One says "System Cleanup" and the other is "More Options."
5. Choose "More Options."
6. Choose System Restore and ok it. It will then prompt you that you about what you are about to do and ask you if it's okay.
7. You should lost more than a gigabyte doing this.

Remember use this ONLY if you make regular backups of your current OS partition!

 

Thank you all for the excellent responses.

I never use registry cleaners, having read the pro & con debates in some of the forums. CCleaner is used by me for the other functions.

I have been peeking into my Windows folder, and decided on the following strategy :-

a) C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download (probably SP3 hotfixes, as appears from the dates) is 0.7 GB. I am going to move this to an external device ... even if these are required again in future, most probably they can be just copied back into C drive.

b) System Restore is bloated, and will release 1.1 GB. However, I will take backup of my entire system on two different media, and then only clear System Restore points.

That should be ok for now, I feel.