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General Computer Support / Help with .msp & .msi files in the WINDOWS/Installer folder
« on: March 23, 2012, 08:36:24 am »
First of all, thank you to everyone in advance... I'm at my wit's end.
I'm working on a friend's computer, (running Windows XP SP3). She complained that it had slowed down to a crawl. Turns out that out of a 30 GB hard drive, there was only 400 MB left of free space! I ran scans (McAfee Stinger, MSE, Clamwin, S&DS, etc...), and found no issues with viruses, though there was some adware I removed, (mostly browser toolbars). After running a couple of cleanup tools (CCleaner, Revo), I managed to free a whopping 1GB of space.... (-____________-)
Using Windirstat, I found that the WINDOWS/Installer folder takes up 13 GB of space! There are over 5K .msp/.msi/.tmp files there. I thought about using the Microsoft uninstall cleanup tool, but found it had been retired...? Used their new Fix It portable tool, but only managed to remove a couple of items, (Revo did most of the job already, I suppose).
So... What can I do now? I've researched the topic, and mostly I get warnings about being careful as to what/how I delete from that folder... Going in there and nuking the whole bit seems dangerous at best, yet I can't figure out how to tell what's safe to delete and what's not... Any ideas/suggestions?
Reinstalling Windows seems to be out of the question since my friend lost the CD (of course) a while back.
Thanks again,
Y&V
I'm working on a friend's computer, (running Windows XP SP3). She complained that it had slowed down to a crawl. Turns out that out of a 30 GB hard drive, there was only 400 MB left of free space! I ran scans (McAfee Stinger, MSE, Clamwin, S&DS, etc...), and found no issues with viruses, though there was some adware I removed, (mostly browser toolbars). After running a couple of cleanup tools (CCleaner, Revo), I managed to free a whopping 1GB of space.... (-____________-)
Using Windirstat, I found that the WINDOWS/Installer folder takes up 13 GB of space! There are over 5K .msp/.msi/.tmp files there. I thought about using the Microsoft uninstall cleanup tool, but found it had been retired...? Used their new Fix It portable tool, but only managed to remove a couple of items, (Revo did most of the job already, I suppose).
So... What can I do now? I've researched the topic, and mostly I get warnings about being careful as to what/how I delete from that folder... Going in there and nuking the whole bit seems dangerous at best, yet I can't figure out how to tell what's safe to delete and what's not... Any ideas/suggestions?
Reinstalling Windows seems to be out of the question since my friend lost the CD (of course) a while back.
Thanks again,
Y&V