Can I safely delete all "Windows installer package" files ?

[borischelski]

Hi there

Please can someone advise me if i Can I safely delete all "Windows installer
package" files ?

Would this give me problems in future in trying to uninstal these programmes ?

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Hi there

Please can someone advise me if i Can I safely delete all "Windows
installer
package" files ?

Would this give me problems in future in trying to uninstal these
programmes ?

Yes to the first and yes to the second..

 

[borischelski]

Mike

Many thanks for taking the trouuble to respond.

This next qustion is based on my own ignorance ! Are your responses not
slightly contradictionary ie its safe to delete but this will also acuse me
future problems in uninstalling ?If the latter point is correct presumably it
would be unsafe to delete ?

Would you personally recommend i delete or keep these files ?

thanks again

regards

 

[Malke]

Mike

Many thanks for taking the trouuble to respond.

This next qustion is based on my own ignorance ! Are your responses not
slightly contradictionary ie its safe to delete but this will also acuse
me future problems in uninstalling ?If the latter point is correct
presumably it would be unsafe to delete ?

Would you personally recommend i delete or keep these files ?

Mike can answer for his own personal recommendation. The advice he gave you
was not contradictory. It is safe to delete the files meaning that it won't
trash your operating system if you do this. Deleting the uninstaller files
will make it so you can't uninstall those programs any more. So rather than
use the word "safe", I would say it is undesirable to delete the uninstaller
files.

If your hard drive is so starved for space that you're considering doing
this, buy a bigger hard drive and/or move some of your data files to an
external hard drive or burn to DVD. If you have plenty of room on the drive
and are just futzing around, find something else to do. ;-)

Malke

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Mike

Many thanks for taking the trouuble to respond.

This next qustion is based on my own ignorance ! Are your responses not
slightly contradictionary ie its safe to delete but this will also acuse
me
future problems in uninstalling ?If the latter point is correct presumably
it
would be unsafe to delete ?

Would you personally recommend i delete or keep these files ?

thanks again

regards

Yes and no..

If you believe that the updates so far have not caused a problem, it is safe
to delete the installer package files.

BUT, although there is a good few of them, they don't take up too much
space.

What you have to decide is this. Is it better to keep some method of
recovering from an update which may, however unlikely, prove to be a problem
in the future or recover a few mb's of HDD real estate?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Mike can answer for his own personal recommendation. The advice he gave you
was not contradictory. It is safe to delete the files meaning that it won't
trash your operating system if you do this. Deleting the uninstaller files
will make it so you can't uninstall those programs any more. So rather than
use the word "safe", I would say it is undesirable to delete the uninstaller
files.

If your hard drive is so starved for space that you're considering doing
this, buy a bigger hard drive and/or move some of your data files to an
external hard drive or burn to DVD. If you have plenty of room on the drive
and are just futzing around, find something else to do. ;-)

borischelski, let me say that I agree completely with what Malke says
above. Let me just add this to the last paragraph: if you are short of
disk space, deleting these files will save you only a tiny amount, and
will be nothing but a stopgap measure. Buy a bigger hard drive.

 

[borischelski]

Guys

Many thanks for your comprehensive advice - i have decided to do nothing !

thanks again

Best

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Guys

Many thanks for your comprehensive advice - i have decided to do nothing !

thanks again

Best

A wise decision to make while all is working exactly as it should be..