could xp be eating hard drive space?

[Brian204845]

My laptop has a 6GB hard drive which is down to about 400mb remaining. I
have virtually no user files (documents) and have even removed most of my
programs to get up to 400mb. I have had to reinstall XP a couple of times.
Could this be why my hard drive space is being eaten up? I can't see XP
taking up 5.6GB! After installing sp2 and other updates there now seem to be
many files in the windows directory with rediculously long names (like
$NtUninstalKB835732$) each using several MBs. Are these required?

While I'm asking... add/remove programs won't allow me to remove an old
Norton Antivirus and a couple of other things taking up about 500mb. Tells
me it can not access the network (I'm not now but was once networked in the
office but all the programs were resident on my hard drive). And then
screams fatal error at me.

Could these problems be related? Could it be athat multiple installs of XP
arestill on the hard drive? Could this be a virus?

Thanks

Brian

[Rock]

Brian204845 wrote:

Lots of things take tape up the space, pagefil.sys, hiberfil.sys
(hibernation), system restore files. Have you run disk cleanup - Double
click My computer, right click the drive, properties Disk Cleanup?

Those $NTuninstall files are uninstall folders for the OS updates and
patches from windows update. If the update causes a problem they can be
uninstalled which uses those folders. They can be safely deleted as can
their entries in add / remove programs after the uninstall folders are
remmoved. There is a .log file for each one that can also be removed.

You might want to start fresh with a clean install especially given your
problems with removing Norton AV. Note that 6GB is not much
breathingspace. How about getting a larger drive.

--
Rock
MS MVP Windows - Shell/User

[Brian204845]

Thanks Rock,

I have cleaned the disk, defraged, chkdskd, dumped temp files, dumped
unnecessary files and documents, I think the only thing I haven't done is
change the oil and filter;~}

I dumped all the uninstall files and have now cleared up 1GB but it still
seems to me that 5GB is a lot of space used by just XP - perhaps I'm wrong
and it takes that much space. I don't have any more than 500MB of other
programs and user files/docs. It just feels like something is awry.

Brian

[Malke]

Brian204845 wrote:

> Thanks Rock,
>
> I have cleaned the disk, defraged, chkdskd, dumped temp files, dumped
> unnecessary files and documents, I think the only thing I haven't done
> is change the oil and filter;~}
>
> I dumped all the uninstall files and have now cleared up 1GB but it
> still seems to me that 5GB is a lot of space used by just XP - perhaps
> I'm wrong
> and it takes that much space. I don't have any more than 500MB of
> other
> programs and user files/docs. It just feels like something is awry.

Hi, Brian. The only thing that is "awry" is that you really have too
small a hard drive for XP and applications. Yes, it is possible that XP
is taking up all that room. With it being difficult to even buy a drive
for a laptop smaller than *40* gigs these days, you are seriously
cramped. However, if you are uncomfortable about it, take your laptop
to a computer professional or a knowledgeable friend (a really
knowledgeable friend, not just someone who says he is!) and have them
take a look.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

[Brian204845]

Thanks Malke, that's all I needed to know.

Brian

[jr]

Brian,

It is possible that Windows XP is taking up all that space. One thing that
could be causing this behavious is the paging file could be very large. I
know mine is about 2 GB.

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