I386 DIR

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Guest

On my Windows XP (HP Pavilion) I'm trying to make room !
I found 2 I386 dirs
C:\i386
C:\WINDOWS\i386
There is probably another in D: (reinstallation)
Can someone help me??
May I without risk delete c:\i386 (486 MB)?
Is there any utility to audit the system?
Thank you in advance.
 
Simple answer is NO. i386 folders contain all your windows operating system
files. delete them and you will not be able to boot your machine.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org

The information in this post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any kind,
either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
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John thank you,
But i just want to understand.
I won't touch what is in c:\windows and particularly c:\windows\i386\....
But I'm still questionning why there is exactly the same files in c:\i386
And in D:\i386 !!
All those files are not expanded (eg ATTRIB.EX_)
Seems it is kinda installation CAB ???
 
Jacob said:
John thank you,
But i just want to understand.
I won't touch what is in c:\windows and particularly c:\windows\i386\....
But I'm still questionning why there is exactly the same files in c:\i386
And in D:\i386 !!
All those files are not expanded (eg ATTRIB.EX_)
Seems it is kinda installation CAB ???
Click to expand...
The \i386 directory is where XP looks for missing things. For instance, if
you think there is a problem with a device driver, the first thing to do is
to remove it (which deletes the thing from the disk). On reboot, XP looks
in \i386 to get a new version of the driver. If \i386 is not present, you
have just shot yourself in the foot. So, leave all of these things alone.

I don't know why you have two, but don't delete either of them.
Jim
 
Jacob

Who built your computer? Is it someone like Dell?

How large is your hard disk? Is the hard drive partitioned? How large is
each partition and how much free space in each? What is each partition
used for? Are your partitions formatted as FAT32 or NTFS?

Right click My Computer and select Properties, System Restore.,
Settings. What is the max mb allowed for each drive / partition?

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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Jacob said:
On my Windows XP (HP Pavilion) I'm trying to make room !
I found 2 I386 dirs
C:\i386
C:\WINDOWS\i386
There is probably another in D: (reinstallation)
Can someone help me??
May I without risk delete c:\i386 (486 MB)?
Is there any utility to audit the system?
Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

I've seen this on other computers also. The one in D: is the recovery
folder for a new XP install. Neither the recovery partition nor the
i386 folder should be removed unless you have an absolutely guaranteed
set of recovery CDs burned from the files in D: .

The one in the windows directory is placed there as part of the install
and must remain there. The one in C:\ was a working copy used by the HP
installer. Sony OEM installers do the same thing. Why they never
cleaned this up, I have never understood.

The i386 folder that Windows is using for its backup files is the one
indicated in the Registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
in the SourcePath key.

Q
 
two cents: you do not need a \i386 folder; it's basically just a copy of
the same folder on the xp setup cd rom. if you do a standard install you
don't get this folder at all; a setup option copies all the cdrom contents
to this dir and then does the install from the HD, but you are not
required to do this. some oems do it, some don't.

If you have a valid cd that you can do a full-up, clean install from then
you don't need it; it's on the cd.

if you have an oem "restore cd" (not the same thing as a setup cd; a
restore cd won't have the i386 folder at all) then you (sortof) need to
keep the i386 folder, but you could burn it to cd and then delete it.

sfc /scannow will want to find this folder, you can point it to it with
the afore-mentioned reg entry, be-it on hd or cd. removing a driver and
then reinstalling it should not require the i386 folder, all xp default
drivers are kept in the drivers.cab file.

if you've installed a service pack or any hotfixes, sfc /scannow will give
precedence to those files (stored in windows\$hf_mig$ and
windows\ServicePackFiles\i386) over the ones in \i386.
 
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