Freeing Up Space in my Boot Partition

C

Crazy Horse

Greetings (and Happy New Year)!

I try to keep about 33% free space in my boot partition, and toward that
end, after cleaning up the normal stuff, I found I had to* try to
archive (WinZip) some other system files into another partition.

Need an opinion on whether or not my choices are reasonably benign.
Here they are:
---------------
<accesspoint.mdb> from: {Program Files\Microsoft Location Finder\data}
<driver.cab> from: {WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386}
<*.msi> mostly from: {WINDOWS\Installer}
<*.msp> from: {WINDOWS\Installer}
<sp1.cab> from: {WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386}
<sp2.cab> from: {WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386}
<sp2.cab> from: {WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386}
---------------
I have no idea what <accesspoint.mdb> is for. And I'm assuming I should
only need <driver.cab> in the event I try to use the system wizard to
install a driver. As for <sp*.cab>, I'm thinking I probably don't
really need those at all, but don't mind keeping them archived just
incase.

Any and all feedback is more than welcome.

Thanks ahead of time.
__________________________
* I know some are going to want to tell me that if I'm having to resort
to such measures, I should figure out how to make a bigger boot
partition, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. I'm not trying
to be snooty about this... I'm sure such advice is probably good advice;
just trying to save someone some keystrokes. Thanks again.
 
A

a2mgoog

Greetings (and Happy New Year)!

I try to keep about 33% free space in my boot partition, and toward that
end, after cleaning up the normal stuff, I found I had to* try to
archive (WinZip) some other system files into another partition.

Need an opinion on whether or not my choices are reasonably benign.
Here they are:
---------------
<accesspoint.mdb> from: {Program Files\Microsoft Location Finder\data}
<driver.cab> from: {WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386}
<*.msi> mostly from: {WINDOWS\Installer}
<*.msp> from: {WINDOWS\Installer}
<sp1.cab> from: {WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386}
<sp2.cab> from: {WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386}
<sp2.cab> from: {WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386}
---------------
I have no idea what <accesspoint.mdb> is for. And I'm assuming I should
only need <driver.cab> in the event I try to use the system wizard to
install a driver. As for <sp*.cab>, I'm thinking I probably don't
really need those at all, but don't mind keeping them archived just
incase.

Any and all feedback is more than welcome.

Thanks ahead of time.
__________________________
* I know some are going to want to tell me that if I'm having to resort
to such measures, I should figure out how to make a bigger boot
partition, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. I'm not trying
to be snooty about this... I'm sure such advice is probably good advice;
just trying to save someone some keystrokes. Thanks again.
Click to expand...

If you haven't already done it, you might consider moving your
pagefile.sys to its own partition. It's easy and fun (just google for
how-to) and it will free up over a GB of space on a typical PC, and
may improve performance.
 
C

Crazy Horse

Greetings (and Happy New Year)!

I try to keep about 33% free space in my boot partition, and toward that
end, after cleaning up the normal stuff, I found I had to* try to
archive (WinZip) some other system files into another partition.
Click to expand...
:
[snip]
:
If you haven't already done it, you might consider moving your
pagefile.sys to its own partition. It's easy and fun (just google for
how-to) and it will free up over a GB of space on a typical PC, and
may improve performance.
Click to expand...
Yup... I've already done that. But thanks for the reply.
 
C

Crazy Horse

Greetings (and Happy New Year)!

I try to keep about 33% free space in my boot partition, and toward that
end, after cleaning up the normal stuff, I found I had to* try to
archive (WinZip) some other system files into another partition.
:
[snip]
:
I have no idea what <accesspoint.mdb> is for.
:
[snip]
:
Click to expand...
I think I've just discovered it's for "MS Streets & Trips."
 
D

davidtheweb

Another thing to try (but considering that you knew to move the page file,
you may have already done this) is to move the Documents and Settings to
another partition. I would have to look up how to do this, and also, are
your programs installed on the boot partition or onto other partitions? Can
you uninstall and reinstall to the non-boot partition to free space?

Crazy Horse said:
Greetings (and Happy New Year)!

I try to keep about 33% free space in my boot partition, and toward that
end, after cleaning up the normal stuff, I found I had to* try to
archive (WinZip) some other system files into another partition.
Click to expand...
:
[snip]
:
If you haven't already done it, you might consider moving your
pagefile.sys to its own partition. It's easy and fun (just google for
how-to) and it will free up over a GB of space on a typical PC, and
may improve performance.
Click to expand...
Yup... I've already done that. But thanks for the reply.
Click to expand...
 
C

Crazy Horse

Another thing to try (but considering that you knew to move the page file,
you may have already done this) is to move the Documents and Settings to
another partition. I would have to look up how to do this, and also, are
your programs installed on the boot partition or onto other partitions? Can
you uninstall and reinstall to the non-boot partition to free space?
Click to expand...

It's never occurred to me that one could move {Documents and Settings}
to another partition, but if there's a way to do that, it'd certainly be
worthing learning about.

To answer your quetion:
C-partition: operating system
D-partition: applications
E-partition: files (data, media, etc.)

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated.
 
M

mayayana

ServicePackFiles\i386 and any i386 folder should be
able to go on another partition.

The dllcache folder can be moved elsewhere and then
deleted. Also change:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SFCQuota
value data to 0.

Set the IE cache to nearly nothing. Maybe
5 MB.

Use the following in the Run window to remove
the whole PCHealth / System File Protection mess,
and dump Windows help in the process. (I don't
know about you, but I can't remember ever finding anything
useful in Windows help.)

rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132
C:\WINDOWS\INF\PCHealth.inf

You might want to research those options a bit before
doing them, though. It's all useless bloat to me (and System
File Protection is very irritating) but some people would
disagree.
 
M

mhc

mayayana said:
Use the following in the Run window to remove
the whole PCHealth / System File Protection mess,
and dump Windows help in the process. (I don't
know about you, but I can't remember ever finding anything
useful in Windows help.)

rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132
C:\WINDOWS\INF\PCHealth.inf
Click to expand...
Here's two useless apps you can remove, NetMeeting and Windows Messenger:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msnetmtg.inf,NetMtg.Remove
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove


And if you're on a single-user system, you can remove DTC and COM+ as well:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\dtcnt5.inf,dtc_uninstall
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\comnt5.inf,com_uninstall
 
C

Crazy Horse

ServicePackFiles\i386 and any i386 folder should be
able to go on another partition.

The dllcache folder can be moved elsewhere and then
deleted. Also change:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SFCQuota
value data to 0.

Set the IE cache to nearly nothing. Maybe
5 MB.

Use the following in the Run window to remove
the whole PCHealth / System File Protection mess,
and dump Windows help in the process. (I don't
know about you, but I can't remember ever finding anything
useful in Windows help.)

rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132
C:\WINDOWS\INF\PCHealth.inf

You might want to research those options a bit before
doing them, though. It's all useless bloat to me (and System
File Protection is very irritating) but some people would
disagree.
Click to expand...
This is great information to have. I'll try to research it a little as
you suggest... and may very well have some questions about it. But I
sure do appreciate having some more options to look at. THANK YOU!
 
C

Crazy Horse

:
[snip]
:
Here's two useless apps you can remove, NetMeeting and Windows Messenger:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msnetmtg.inf,NetMtg.Remove
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove


And if you're on a single-user system, you can remove DTC and COM+ as well:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\dtcnt5.inf,dtc_uninstall
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\comnt5.inf,com_uninstall
Click to expand...
Even more options! Great! Thank you.
 
M

mhc

Crazy said:
:
[snip]
:
Here's two useless apps you can remove, NetMeeting and Windows Messenger:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msnetmtg.inf,NetMtg.Remove
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove


And if you're on a single-user system, you can remove DTC and COM+ as well:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\dtcnt5.inf,dtc_uninstall
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\comnt5.inf,com_uninstall
Click to expand...
Even more options! Great! Thank you.
Click to expand...
You might want to look on the following website. It has the most complete
information on the 'net about individual Windows system files, and there is a
lot of excellent discussion as well:

http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/index.php
 
C

Crazy Horse

You might want to look on the following website. It has the most complete
information on the 'net about individual Windows system files, and there is a
lot of excellent discussion as well:

http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/index.php
Click to expand...
It's now in my {Favorites}!

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. :cool:
 
M

mayayana

And if you're on a single-user system, you can remove DTC and COM+ as well:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\dtcnt5.inf,dtc_uninstall
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection
Click to expand...
%windir%\inf\comnt5.inf,com_uninstall

That's good to know. I clean sysoc.inf in order
to show all Windows components in Add/Remove,
and COM+ is listed there as 18 MB, but it won't
allow me to uncheck it.
 
M

mhc

mayayana said:
That's good to know. I clean sysoc.inf in order
to show all Windows components in Add/Remove,
and COM+ is listed there as 18 MB, but it won't
allow me to uncheck it.
Click to expand...

I edited the SYSOC.INF file and removed entries that I never used and/or had
removed and never planned to reinstall. In this way, the Optional Components
Manager loads and runs MUCH faster! Here's my entire SYSOC.INF file:

[Version]
Signature = "$Windows NT$"
DriverVer=07/01/2001,5.1.2600.1106

[Components]
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7
AccessUtil=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,accessor.inf,,7

[Global]
WindowTitle=%WindowTitle%
WindowTitle.StandAlone="*"

[Strings]
WindowTitle="Windows Home Edition Setup"
WindowTitle_Standalone="Windows Components Wizard"
 

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