I much appreciate the time you have taken to give me such a full and
thoughtful reply.
I had already considered the options you mention, and I do have an external
80GB USB drive containing an up-to-date compressed image of the laptop drive,
plus weekly incrememtal backups (including those $NtUninstall files), but for
reasons I won't go into now I would still value the nearly 300MB space that I
could free up by losing uninstall stuff I KNOW I will not use. I need all
that user data (mostly wav files) daily in the course of my work. And I KNOW
300MB is less than 30 mins @ 16bit/44k1, but I'd LIKE to have those extra
mins right there in my lap...
And I lied when I told you it has a 30GB drive -- in fact it has 40GB, but
there's an untouchable 10GB partition which is full of fixed processing data
and lookup tables used for my work.
So if you DO know an answer to my original question, I STILL (however
misguidedly) want to get that stuff off my beloved ThinkPad a21P. (1600x1200
screen, even back in year 2000!).
Thanks again for your cosiderate reply -- please don't take the above as
ingratitude...
"Shenan Stanley" wrote:
> Kim Aku wrote:
> > I have a laptop which came with one of the first versions of XP
> > Pro. As soon as SP2 appeared I acquired the install CD and
> > installed SP2 without a hitch. Since then I've dutifully allowed
> > auto-update to installed all the subsequent patches and security
> > updates. The OS has never missed a beat and seems well fortified
> > against external attack, so I cannot imagine I'd ever want to
> > uninstall any update I've had so far.
> >
> > However my 30GB disk is bursting with data, and I'd like to get rid
> > of all that update uninstall stuff I'll never use. If I just
> > permanently delete those zillions of $Uninstall files in my Windows
> > folder, will that do the trick, or will it leave other stuff I
> > don't know about as well as confusing the proper Uninstall control
> > panel?
> >
> > Is there not a proper officially santioned tool to remove all these
> > backups & stuff when the user is sure he's never going to want to
> > roll back?
>
> You are not going to free up that much by deleting these. Your space is
> being used up elsewhere. If you are concerned (and this is not a bad thing)
> that you MAY have to rollback someday - then it might be easier to purchase
> an external (USB/FireWire) drive and backup data to it (your personal data -
> which is what is likely taking up the most space.)
>
> Windows XP, Office 2003, and a dozen other applications wouldn't fill up
> 30GB of space - wouldn't likely take up 10GB even. So 2/3 of your space is
> likely your files and some of those could likely be "archived" - to a CD/DVD
> or external hard drive - so they do not take up the space on your system..
> And if on a portable device like that - you could keep a copy at a safe
> place AND bring a copy with you in case you need to access that older data.
> Not to menation that since 300GB external hard drives can be had for less
> than $200 - you increase your available space for portable and dynamically
> useable data by 10 times.
>
> --
> Shenan Stanley
> MS-MVP
> --
> How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>
>
>
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