Superfluous folders

[Jerry]

There must be a point in time when the folders listed under
\windows\system32\ReinstallBackups become totally unnecessary or irrelevant
as they appear to contain the older drivers as stuff has been updated.

Anyone know if these can be deleted from within XP and any information on
the best way to do it - other than just deleting the folder?

Jerry

 

[Wesley Vogel]

My windows\system32\ReinstallBackups folder is empty.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Jerry]

Wesley,

Then what emptied it? Or did not fill it in the first place? Mine goes from
\0000 to 0031 then \200 with everyone of them having a subfolder
\DriverFiles which, upon inspection, holds a driver for a piece of hardware.

Also, Wesley, I added an additional comment to my Event Viewer posting.

Jerry

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Hi Jerry,

I didn't realize you were the same person. I just got done reading that
post.

I found this info many places on the web.

If you update any drivers in Device Manager the
%windir%\system32\ReinstallBackups folder is created with backups of the old
drivers.

To access the Roll Back Driver option on the Driver tab of a device's
properties in Device Manager, the backup drivers need to be stored in the
windows\system32\ReinstallBackups folder. This allows you to roll back to
the previous version of the drivers.

If you are sure that you're not going to rollback any drivers, the
subfolders and their files can be deleted. If the ReinstallBackups folder
is deleted ,it will be recreated the next time any drivers are updated.

Also related is the Last Known Good recovery option. One of the most common
uses for Last Known Good is to return a system to a bootable state after
you've installed a driver that prevents the system from booting
successfully.

When you update a driver the Hardware Installation Wizard (HIW) saves the
previous version used to boot successfully in
%windir%\LastGood\System32\Drivers and when you select the Last Known Good
boot option the updated driver is replaced with the old version.

The last time I installed Windows XP on this machine was 18 February, 2004.
When I installed it, I never installed NVIDIA's drivers for my video card.
I just used XP's default drivers. At some point I went ahead and installed
NVIDIA's drivers.

My %windir%\system32\ReinstallBackups folder Created date is Thursday, 22
July, 2004. That must be when I installed NVIDIA's drivers.

As to why my %windir%\system32\ReinstallBackups folder is empty, I probably
emptied it myself because it had NVIDIA stuff in it. I do not remember for
sure. I hate NVIDIA and I will never again buy any of their products.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Jerry]

Wesley,

Would be nice if the documentation included comments about why those folders
are there and the conditions on deleting them. Looks like I'll just have to
remember to add them to my list of chores to do when it's time to clean
things up.

Somebody should save all these comments/fixes and write a book so the
'world' can be kept up-to-date.

Jerry

 

[Jerry]

Wesley,

Jerry again.

What - not answers on my other question? See Registered Packages above.

Jerry

 

[Jerry]

Wesley,

OK - I checked the \Reinstall Backups folder and dumped all those from 15
months ago.

I can't find a \LastGood folder. Is there supposed to be one? Searched the
drive and did not get a hit.

Jerry