JOHN HABS Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Can anyone please tell me what happens to the previous installed Microsoft Updates when new ones are installed - do the old ones remain on your computer or are they replaced ? The reason for asking is due to the fact that my computer only has a small hard drive (80GB ) and has new updates are installed my hard drive space appears to be getting smaller, I regularly do a clean-up with CCleaner and a defrag but don't gain anymore space. I'm running Windows XP / SP3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emmie92 Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Have you considered purchasing an external hard drive? I have a 40GB hard drive in my old laptop and it is more than sufficient as I use an external hard drive for storage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cenobite Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Try running windows disk cleanup, select other options, then clean up system restore and shadow copies. I cannot remember if this works with XP, but with Vista and Win 7, I have seen gains of 10GB. Then again, you might have tried this already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walkerx Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 when you installed SP3 did you run the command to remove the installation files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howden Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Try running windows disk cleanup, select other options, then clean up system restore and shadow copies. I cannot remember if this works with XP, but with Vista and Win 7, I have seen gains of 10GB. Then again, you might have tried this already. Yes, it works on XP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swarfendor437 Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Another area often over looked is the 'Recycle Bin' (Recycler). By default XP sets this at 10% of your hard drive - you can safely reduce this to 2-3% - it will just mean that exceedingly large files you delete may not get the option to go there but get deleted directly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emmie92 Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Turning off System Restore will give you back valuable disk space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JOHN HABS Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 Thanks for all the replies but no-one has yet answered my question : What happens to the old Microsoft Updates when new ones are installed ? I would have thought Microsoft would have deleted the old ones on downloading the new ones ? Someone suggested my purchasing an external Hard-drive......I have one... a 2TB but I still need to keep a decent size hard-drive space for the files and folders that are needed to run my main hard-drive and operating programs - if Microsoft keep downloading large updates then in time my hard-drive will hardly have any space. Someone suggested I run Windows disk clean-up .......I do this frequently as well as a clean-up with CCleaner. Someone suggested turning off System Restore to gain valuable hard-drive space......thats all well and good but what happens if I happen to get an infected PC and need to restore it back to a previous state - what happens also if the PC totally crashes and needs to be restore from a disc and you don't have one ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emmie92 Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Looks to me you are being overly concerned about Microsoft Updates. Just how much of your 80GB hard drive space have you used? I have Windows XP with SP3 installed on a 5GB partition (C: Drive) and all my software and takes up just over 2.5GB of hard drive space. An install of Windows XP only takes up around 1.5GB of hard drive space. System Restore will use around 5% of your hard drive space on default settings. You can manage the disk space that is used by System Restore and allocate less space or simply turn it off. If you are that concerned about Windows updates then just download the critical security updates only or even turn off updates altogether. Another option is to remove all unneeded software to free up extra space. If your PC totally crashes System Restore will be of little use to you and if you have a virus it is possible that it may be in System Restore as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HotPhil Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 A good explanation (and reasons you shouldn't meddle in there) at http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/1306-Demystifying-the-WinSxS-directory-in-Windows-XP,-Vista-and-Server-20032008.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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