XP is too large

[Dayna]

C:/Windows has grown to 22.5 GB with 225 updates. I need to clean this out
to reduce it's size on the hard drive. I need the space.

Do I have to reformat the drive and reinstall everything or is there a way
to clean this out?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

C:/Windows has grown to 22.5 GB with 225 updates. I need to clean
this out to reduce it's size on the hard drive. I need the space.

Do I have to reformat the drive and reinstall everything or is
there a way to clean this out?

See what is taking up the space and how the drive is partitioned.

Start button --> RUN (no RUN, press the "Windows Key" + R) --> type in:
compmgmt.msc
--> Click OK.

Answer things in the affirmative until the window opens. In the computer
management window, left side, locate and expand "Storage" and select (click
on) "Disk Management". That should bring up a list on the right of your
disks.

Find your drive(s) in that list and scroll left/right to see the
other columns and give the "Total" and "Free" space here.

Looking at the picture on the right side, bottom part of the Disks - how
is each one partitioned (divided up into sections)?

Now that you know how things are partitioned and how much space you should
have (in total) - let's cleanup.

Download/install this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

After installing, do the following:

Start button --> RUN --> type in:
"%ProgramFiles%\Windows Installer Clean Up\msizap.exe" g!
--> Click OK.

(The quotation marks and percentage signs and spacing should be exact.)

If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can delete the
uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has installed...
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm
( Particularly of interest here - #4 )
( Alternative: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm )

You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but your
latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..

When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the system's
memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of the hiberfil.sys
file will always equal the amount of physical memory in your system. If you
don't use the hibernate feature and want to recapture the space that Windows
uses for the hiberfil.sys file, perform the following steps:

- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start, Settings,
Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check box, then
click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting Never under the
"System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab doesn't delete the
hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power Schemes
tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.

You can control how much space your System Restore can use...

1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and click on
the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I suggest moving
the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or close to that...)
5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.

You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can utilize...

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 64MB and 128MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 64MB and 128MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:

Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Other ways to free up space..

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being used.

In the end - a standard Windows XP installation with all sorts of extras
will not likely be above about 4.5GB to 9GB in size. If you have more space
than that (likely do on a modern machine) and most of it seems to be used -
likely you need to move *your stuff* off and/or find a better way to manage
it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

C:/Windows has grown to 22.5 GB with 225 updates. I need to clean this out
to reduce it's size on the hard drive. I need the space.

Do I have to reformat the drive and reinstall everything or is there a way
to clean this out?

Shenan Stanley has given you lots of good advice to reclaim some of
the space. But I wanted to add the following:

These days 22.5GB is not a very great size, and if you badly need some
of that space back, you almost certainly just don't have enough disk
space.

Whatever you do to save some disk space will just be a stopgap
measure. You can save some now, but very soon you will be very short
again. The real solution to your problem is to buy a larger disk drive
second or a second one. Fortunately they are very inexpensive now.

 

[JS]

C:/Windows has grown to 22.5 GB with 225 updates. I need to clean this
out
to reduce it's size on the hard drive. I need the space.

Do I have to reformat the drive and reinstall everything or is there a way
to clean this out?

Low Disk Space
How to free up hard drive space on your Laptop or PC
http://www.pagestart.com/lowdiskspace01.html

The article covers all those updates and a lot more!

 

[AJR]

Dayna from your post "...C:/Windows has grown to 22.5 GB ...." - Is it
"Windows" or did you mean the "C" drive?

 

[peter]

Considering that a drive cannot grow but a folder on the drive can
what do you think he means???

peter

 

[Olórin]

OP could have meant the *used* space on C:\.

Considering that a drive cannot grow but a folder on the drive can
what do you think he means???

peter

 

[peter]

"C:/Windows has grown to...."
that's what the OP said.............
pretty specific to me

peter

 

[ju.c]

Here is a good tutorial:

Making Your Windows Folder Smaller
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=80511


ju.c

 

[Olórin]

I agree. However, I was countering the argument that OP couldn't have meant
C:\ instead of C:\Windows *because* C:\, being a drive, won't just change in
size.

 

[Anteaus]

22GB is an enormous size, even with all the updates I'm suspecting there is
something else making it so large.

WinDirStat is very helpful in these circumstances. Just don't delete stuff
that might be essential without researching it first.

http://windirstat.info/

 

[Rishabh Rohan]

Note : Try these only if nothing else works. Be sure to try what others have to say before you follow my methods.

My unupdated version consumes just 1.37 GB. Your problem could be due to some viruses or stuff. Probably DirectX is consuming all that space. If you haven't installed anything new after those updates, try System Restore. If you have tried every means possible to retrieve your hard disk space, then ONLY FORMAT C: drive and reinstall Windows.