NT files on XP C: drive

[Gordon L. Richard]

I'm running Windows XP Pro, Ver. 5.1[Buld 2600.XPSP
2.030422-1633: Service Pack 1], on a home built system with an
ASUS P2-B MB, an Intel Pentium III 500 MHz processor, and 256 MB
RAM. This system has been a good solid system, but lately I have
noticed a very significant slow down.

I think I may be on the verge of running out of disk space on
drive C: (10GB) but I can't find anything that I can comfortably
remove. I notice that the WINDOWS folder has a very large number
of files of the type, $NTServicePaciUninstal$,
$NTUninstallKB8221557$, and so on. There are literally hundreds
of these files, and they are shown in blue text in my Windows
Explorer pane. What are they, and can I safely delete them?

I did upgrade from NT to XP, when XP first became available, so
maybe these relate to the earlier NT installation and are just
taking up space now.

Where did the Windows Temp file dissappear to? I can't find it
anywhere.

 

[purplehaz]

Those files are windows update patches and such. They can be deleted safely
and then cleared from add/remove programs as well after they are manually
deleted.
Temp folder = C:\Documents and Settings\your user name here\Local
Settings\Temp
(you have to have hidden folders set to show to find the folder).

 

[Gordon L. Richard]

I'm running Windows XP Pro, Ver. 5.1[Buld 2600.XPSP
2.030422-1633: Service Pack 1], on a home built system with an
ASUS P2-B MB, an Intel Pentium III 500 MHz processor, and 256 MB
RAM. This system has been a good solid system, but lately I have
noticed a very significant slow down.

I think I may be on the verge of running out of disk space on
drive C: (10GB) but I can't find anything that I can comfortably
remove. I notice that the WINDOWS folder has a very large number
of files of the type, $NTServicePaciUninstal$,
$NTUninstallKB8221557$, and so on. There are literally hundreds
of these files, and they are shown in blue text in my Windows
Explorer pane. What are they, and can I safely delete them?

I did upgrade from NT to XP, when XP first became available, so
maybe these relate to the earlier NT installation and are just
taking up space now.

Where did the Windows Temp file dissappear to? I can't find it
anywhere.

Thanks for the responses. I deleted the big bunch of $NT... files
and did a disk cleanup and things are back to normal...for the
time being. I also located the Windows Temp folder and trashed
most of the files in it. This gives me about 250MB of free disk
space, so it will hold me for a while.

I agree, I should get a larger hard drive. I presently have 4
hard drives on this computer, and try to use C: for my
applications, only. I keep my documents on D: and my junk on E:
and F:. The problem is, things get onto C: that I didn't intend
to put there.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I think I may be on the verge of running out of disk space on
drive C: (10GB) but I can't find anything that I can comfortably
remove. I notice that the WINDOWS folder has a very large number
of files of the type, $NTServicePaciUninstal$,
$NTUninstallKB8221557$, and so on.

THese are folders of the files needed to uninstall those hotfixes
(windows updates). The ServicePackUninstall specifically is to allow
you to uninstall SP1; the KBnnnnnn or Qnnnnnn ones can be looked up at
the corresponding http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;nnnnnn
page to see what they were for.

If you decide you will not want to uninstall a given fix, you can delete
its folder.

Note though the other folder - ServicePackFiles; probably not compressed
(blue). That contains the service pack file versions for use in
preference to ones from the original CD if needed by File
Protection/SFC/New Hardware etc. On an NTFS drive a useful amount of
space can be saved by compressing it. What you can do if you have a CD
burner is burn the complete folder to a CD, then run regedit.exe and at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup

Change the value of ServicePackSourcePath in the right pane to reflect
the drive. Best if you have 2 drives, and can have the original
SourcePath on one and this on the other