Free Up Hard Drive Space.

Limited space is always a problem for the avid computer abuser. Especially for those of us who can't go out and buy another hard drive every time one fills up. If you are anything like me you hate to let those gigs upon gigs music, videos, programs and game software just slip away. So what's there for you to do?

Lucky for you there are most likely Gigabytes of unnecessary information that Windows XP loves to hold onto and collect. Before you start, you should take note of what your free space is at now, nothing better than being able to measure the fruit of your labor in the end.

Disk Cleanup
System Restore Points
Temp files

Disk Cleanup
This is a pretty basic task and most people know of this trick. The tool doesn't always free up a lot of space but it's a great place to start when freeing up some space and every MB counts.

  1. In the My computer window right-click on your C: Drive and select properties.
  2. In the window that pops up under the general press the Disk Cleanup button and wait while it calculates all the useless files that XP has grown so attached to.
  3. Anything inside of the Files to Delete box is safe to remove check all the boxes and press OK. Deleting these files can take a little while as XP removes them all safely the bar at times can even look like it isn't moving, just be patient.



Delete those nasty Restore points
After the Disk Cleanup tool completes bring the Disk Cleanup window back up by following the instructions above again. Windows XP for no real reason has been holding onto what is most likely gigabytes of information for its revolutionary System Restore tool. And while it was so new and exciting to have a second chance every time your computer start flashing the blue screen of death at you, or you deleted your registry because it looked at you funny the truth is that XP has become over the years a rather stable OS.

  1. Back in the Disk Cleanup window select the More Options tab at the top.
  2. Under the More Options tab you will see three boxes 'Windows Components', Installed Programs' (Fancy Name for the Add or Remove Programs window), and finally 'System Restore'
  3. Press 'Clean up...' under System Restore and confirm 'Yes'

This usually clears up between 2-5 GBs of space. ^_^

You now have the option to turn System Restore off. As I stated before I don't think that this tool gets used much anymore. However, if you are a someone who's uses this tool to save their butt pretty often, I'd leave it on.

Temp Folder
The temp folder in one of XP biggest dump sites, this is where Windows puts unpacks loads of information and seems to subsequently forgets about it. Windows XP for some reason seems to hold onto more information than any previous versions.

Start by locating the temp folder.

  1. Type 'C:\Documents and Settings\*UserName*\Local Settings' into your address bar, replacing *UserName* with what ever your User Name is. Many tutorials will advise changing the system settings to show hidden content, but I like to leave myself as little clean up as possible.
  2. Once in Local settings you should see the Temp folder we're looking for.

There is some controversy regarding the next step. I have heard stories about some programs and even the internet connectivity seizing function after the files in the temp folder being deleted. I personally question the intelligent design of any program that relies on temporary files to function. I personally have never seen the ill effects of deleting everything in the Temp folder. However, to be safe the was I go about this is as follows.

  1. Restart your rig in safemode. Since some files may claim to thay are being used by active programs this is the safest way to move or delete system files.
  2. Create a new folder on your Desktop and name it whatever you want.
  3. Follow the steps above to return to the Temp folder.
  4. Once inside hold Ctrl+A to select all files within.
  5. Now move all files to the folder on your Desktop. This if anything turn out to be important it is backed up.
  6. When the move is complete you can restart your computer and resume usual windows operations.
  7. Your OS should boot smoothly. Once in windows check around open some of your most used programs and try surfing the web for a bit. If everything is working fine then you are ready to proceed to the next step.
  8. Now you can delete the folder on your Desktop which contains the Temp files knowing that it won't carry any repercussions.