Minimising XP file size on c: drive ?

[Guest]

Is there anything I can do to reduce the amount of disk space that XP is
taking up on my c: drive? It is running at over 3gb I have little or no other
programs installed on that drive and am wondering if there are any useless
windows files hiding somewhere taking up rather a large amount of space. I
have now run out of space on that drive so I need to do something soon. I
have XP with SP2 running.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

If you don't use Hibernate, that can be disabled to free up disk space equal
to the amount of RAM your system has:

Control Panel>Power Options - click on the Hibernate tab and disable it.
The disk space will be released immediately.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Thanks, that will save 1gb but I do like that feature. I was hoping there
was some hidden stuff that XP is hanging on to for no reason that I could
remove also.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Hiberate is most usefully used on a laptop. I've never used it on any of my
PCs. 3 GBs would be about right for an XP install if Hibernate is enabled.

 

[Guest]

Well its the first thing to go tonight whne I get home. followed by the
recovery console. 3+gb seems far too much for xp to need. i would have though
1gb too much!

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

A 'normal' install of XP takes up about 1.5 GBs + the hibernate file + the
pagefile.sys file. You may be able to reduce the latter a little bit, but
perhaps by not very much. Have a look at the following article by Alex
Nichol:

"Virtual Memory in Windows XP"
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

 

[Mike Hall]

Ross

You need to get a larger drive.. expecting XP to sit happily on a drive that
was only really suitable for an older and much less capable operating system
is essentially stupidity..

Mike Hall