Cleaning hard drive

Hi, I want to clean hard drive up to save space. When I look in control panel to remove programs there is long list of security updates (hot fix) for windows xp dating back to year 2004. What should I do about these? Thank you, pablo

 

>> Hi, I want to clean hard drive up to save space. When I look in control panel to remove programs there is long list of security updates (hot fix) for windows xp dating back to year 2004. What should I do about these? Thank you, pablo <<

Hi Pablo and welcome to Major Geeks!

Do you mean you saw all of these Hot Fixes "uninstallers" in Control Panel > Add Remove? And now you want to remove them to 'save space?' My advice would be to leave those alone.

First of all, removing them will only save a miniscule amount of space and I doubt that you'll notice the difference. Just for the heck of it; I removed all of them one time on an older machine (that had like dozens of these hotfix uninstallers in Add/Remove). After I deleted all of the uninstallers; I used a tool called DiskMem Panel to see the difference and there was no noticeable difference.

Secondly, these may be necessary at some point in the future; because you may actually NEED these uninstallers to get rid of a hot fix that "goes bad." That's why Microsoft installs these uninstallers - as a safety precaution. If this situation happens and a BAD hotfix shows up which has to be removed; you will have no way of doing so, because the uninstaller is gone.

That being said, if you want to clean out junk files from your hard drive (safely) you should download CCleaner Slim (No Yahoo Toolbar, English) available right here at Major Geeks. Use the 'cleaner' section after you install this program.

If you have never used this type of drive cleaner before, you will notice a significant reduction in unnecessary files that have been left over time on your system. CCleaner also comes with a "Registry Cleaner" but that part is really for advanced users.

Note: Click here for a Quick Tutorial/Tour regarding how to use CCleaner after it is installed

Good Luck!

 

Thanks for your help! pablo