Clear space on your hard drive by deleting old Windows uninstall folders
I had occasion to open the C:Windows folder on my old XP machine, and was immediately struck by the number of folders whose names began "$NtUninstall". They were from several hundred kilobytes to 10 megabytes in size, and there were more than 150 of these bad boys just taking up space on my hard drive. There were also a few multi-megabyte files whose names began with "$MSI31Uninstall" or "$NtServicePackUninstall". Some of these folders dated back to when I bought the machine in 2003.
If Explorer won't show you the contents of the C:Windows folder, click Tools > Folder Options > View, select Show hidden files and folders in the Advanced settings window, and click OK.
These uninstall folders are intended to roll back the system in the event of a Windows patch gone bad. Obviously, the OS updates they refer to had done no harm to the machine, which is working just fine. The PC's 30GB hard drive has 5GB of free space, which is slightly less than the 20 percent margin many experts recommend to ensure a smooth-running drive. Clearly getting rid of these unnecessary patch fixers would do my system good. To play it safe, I retained the few uninstall folders that were less than a month or two old.
Make room on your hard drive by deleting old Windows update uninstall folders, but play it safe by retaining the most recent ones.
Unfortunately, the files aren't listed by date, and if you click Date Modified in Explorer's Details view, the uninstall folders get mixed up with other folders in C:Windows. Rather than selecting the uninstall folders one by one, I clicked the first one I wanted to delete, then Shift-clicked the last one, and finally Ctrl-clicked the few recent ones I wanted to keep to deselect them.
The fixes will still be listed in XP's Add or Remove Programs Control Panel applet. To remove their entries, open the program, check Show updates at the top of the window, scroll to Windows XP - Software Updates, select each one at a time, and click Remove. You'll get an error message telling you the file has already been deleted. Click Yes and move on to the next one. Just be sure not to accidentally uninstall an update that you haven't already deleted. If the Software Update Removal Wizard opens rather than the "already deleted" error message, click Cancel.
Play it safe by keeping the folders in the Recycle Bin for a week or so. If you experience problems with a Windows patch for which you've deleted the uninstall folder, simply locate it in the Recycle Bin, right-click it, and choose Restore to return it to the C:Windows folder.
I found only two of these patch-uninstall folders in the C:Windows folder on my Vista PC, both of which were empty. I don't know if that means Microsoft figured out a way to safeguard its Vista fixes without cluttering up your hard drive, or if the update-uninstall folders are now stashed somewhere else.
Tomorrow: Using OpenOffice.org's Writer app in a Microsoft Word world.
Dennis O'Reilly has covered PCs and other technologies in print and online since 1985. Along with more than a decade as editor for Ziff-Davis's Computer Select, Dennis edited PC World's award-winning Here's How section for more than seven years. He is a member of the CNET blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. 
There, I fixed up that headline for you ;-)
Sorry, I couldn't resist, but there seems to be an consistant theme building with these Workers Edge articles.
Just sit back and think about this for a moment.
You have 100's of files there taking up 10's of GB &, as you say, some of them came with the computer. It's all junk, look at the screen shot - its gigs of trash. 100's of files & folders that make no sense at all.
Surely this is wrong? This isn't the way a modern operating system for 2008 should work is it?
There must be a better way out there...?
But I think this is one of those "ease the pain" things, where you can't do anything drastic with the machine.. Kind of like KDE4 apps on windows.
Basically, I was going to say that this article can be extended to "How to free up space in my rapidly-expanding WINE installation" too. WINE creates these "Uninstall" folders too, when it is emulating Windows XP, and they're just as pointless there.
Is that NORMAL??? The uninstall files total only 845MB so that<s NOT what's
making the Windows folder this huge. Therefore What IS making the Windows folder this big?
When I go inside the Windows folder, SELECT ALL, and show properties,
the size comes up as follows:
Size: 8.51GB
Size on disk: 8.17GB
This is all VERY confusing.
Can someone PLEASE help me figure all this out?
There must be some major junk-in-the-trunk inside the Windows folder,
but how do I figure out what to delete?
Thanks very much! :-)
- by jumpmanlives April 5, 2009 1:47 AM PDT
- Right on Denis, I just cleared 970MB on a 10GB drive that only had 18MB Free 6 minutes ago.
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