Get back half a gig of space on your hard drive

I just got rid of 6,102 useless files taking up nearly half a gig of space on my hard drive.

Do a Start--->Search for *.*_ files ( that is star dot star underscore (or asterisk dot asterisk underscore) on your system.

This will show over 6,000+ files (in my XP Pro).

These files, as most of you know, are unextracted (or unexpanded) files that formed part of a program installation.

Most, if not all, have been expanded as part of the installation of the program and the unexpanded ones are no longer really required.

What I suggest you do is to back up these files to a CD, or USB flash drive, or both, and then delete them.

All care, but no responsibility for this suggestion. All I know is it works for me.
Then do a defrag of your hard drive, or course. Bazza

 

Just did that and BANG i found 4 files for a big whopping 500K thanks bigbazza
i realy needed that 500K i guess i keep my computer cleanner then you....

 

Nah, I had a major crash on Friday 13th, due to my own stupidity.

I had to start all over again.

This revelation formed part of my getting my laptop back to where it was prior to the crash.

I had deleted these previously, but they popped up again with the new install. Bazza

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And another 5 posts and you will become a " Major Geek ".
Good onyer, mate. Bazza

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bigbazza wrote:

Let's say 4 yeap it took me almost five years for 1,000 post this is the first time i get this high on a forum, so saving one geek at the time... will continue
for anothers 5 years i hope.....

 

yep, keep going.
Love your nickname and avatar. Bazza

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Hi Clark_Kent,
You are already a MAJORGEEK to the rest of us MAJOR-DUMMY'S keep these kinds of things coming!
I found 5,474 files for a total of 329 mb I'm afraid to do anything about it right now as i don't have enough cd's to back it all up.
Thanks,
Dan

 

One CD will do it. (700 megs capacity, usually).
As for being a Major Geek, I did a Major-Dummy on Friday the 13th.
Bazza

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What did you do? lol

Edit: oh no i just did the search and the search program stoped responding. i guess i got alot more thin you lol it just started working again and so far over 100files am i lucky or just out of luck

BTW did you have it search in system folders and every other folder??

 

Just go to Start--->Search and type in *.*_
(note the underscore appearing last),
and let it search your entire C: drive.
No need to specify Folders, just let it search the lot. Bazza

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Bazza, Bazza, Bazza...we've been down this road before, eh?
You might want to leave the I386 stuff alone...in case you need it someday.

 

yea i did that lol so its done and it found 140files taking a big 50mb's

btw i seen your post about the scanner and i had to download it too because both my 40gig drives are filled up and i dont have that much on my computer lol so thanks for the link in other thread

 

50 megs is hardly worth worrying about, unless you are really short of space.

I've found thousands of files and half a gig of disk space so far and still going.
I'm using XP Pro (ATI and Toshiba), so that may be why.
Don't know about other OS's.

Glad you liked Scanner. Simple, fast and it works well. Bazza

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It's driving me crazy tring to copy these files. It says windows cannot copy files of this kind: ads?client=ca-pub
can i get rid of them

 

Hey Bazza, searched and came up with Nada. Zero.

I clean my comp every day so I dont get build up

You might want to check:

Windows > Software Distribution > Downloads

I empty this folder after every Windows Update. After a Clean OS install you can get 3 - 400 mb in that folder.

Warning: I do this and have no ill effect on my box, but do it at your own risk my friend

Edit: Make sure you just empty the Downloads folder, leave the rest alone or windows will start sending you update warnings for updates you already have.

 

hi,
just done a search on mine - got a whopping 34 files with a huge 961kb of space with 220gb hard drives

os w2k pro sp4

 

What program do you use for Search. The Quick Search program that I normally use doesn't like wildcards like _ (underscore).

Try the Microsoft Search program (Start--->Search) and make sure you enter *.*_

If you are doing this, let us know the name of the file/s that are giving you trouble.

All files should end like DL_ for DLL unexpanded files, EX_ for EXE files, etc.
Don't delete anything that does NOT end in an underscore _ Bazza

Remember all care but no responsibility for the use of this tip. Baz
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Nah, I've done it before as you say.
I deleted over 5,000 unextracted files from C:\windows\I386 Folder, back in April.
I backed them up to CD. Never had to re-instate even one of them.
Still got the original CD in my Backup CD case.

My crash on Friday 13th and re-install, meant that all the cr*p was back again.

That is why I have mentioned this again, for newbies and those who may not have considered doing this before. Bazza

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That was pretty lame, Bazza. All my computer found was 1 file that was 65 KB in size.

 

What OS?
In my XP Pro there are certainly hundreds, thousands, of unexpanded files.
Bazza

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When it try to copy the files this come up and won't let me do anything else until i click through them all (See screen shot) All the ones with _ are 1386 files that Toni_1947 says "You might want to leave the I386 stuff alone...in case you need it someday"
Thanks,
Dan

 

Sorry here is the screen shot

 

You definitely do not need the *._ files to run your PC, once they have been expanded.
You will only need them if something goes wrong with the expanded version of that file.

That is why I backed them up to a CD (just in cast) and deleted them from my PC.

Remember, a little bit of practice beats a lot of theory.

I've done it. It works in practice.
Also remember, this works fine on my PC, may not work as well on anyone elses so I make the usual Restore point, backup disclaimers. Bazza

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Bazza you have given some great tips in the past and I have used most of them (still love my Mailwasher which you posted) but in this day and age saving 0.50 Gig and possibly have a later conflict isn't worth it Mate. A 150 gig HD with "System Restore" default enabled consumes over 1.50 Gig (12% of HD is default) trying to find the unexpanded file later when problems arise just doesn't compute in my opinion. Anyway that's my $0.02 worth, I agree with Toni on this one Mate (PS:- Bazza maybe it's that Vegemite you guys from Oz love Cheers)

 

Thanks Bazza, Toni and BCGray I appreciate all the feedback! I haven't gotten back my 320 MB yet but i did just downloaded mailwasher. It looks like a great program we are getting 2-300 spam e-mails a day. It should not take long for it to learn and decipher the real from the spam. This forum is GREAT i am learning more in this forum than i have in the last 5 years.
Thank you MAJORGEEKS,
Dan

 

Mailwasher is a great program. Unfortunately I could not even get the Pro version to co-operate with AOL ( a long time ago). One of the limits of MailWasher free version was that it only supported one email address at a time. That was a long time ago and that limitation may also have changed. I will be installing once I get rid of AOL. Bazza

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@ bigbazza - I'm runnig Windows XP Home. I ran the search more than once and changed the search paramaters. I got a total of 3 files after changing the search paramaters. Oh, well.

 

That's good. It must just be my combination of Toshiba, ATI and XP Pro that gives me lots of stuff that is not (or no longer) necessary, or is duplicated. Bazza

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5351 files here.

 

Glad I'm not the only one.
Although some others have gotten similar numbers. , some have found only a few.

Back 'em up and delete them, would be my recommendation. unless they don't worry you. They annoy me.

As usual, all care and no responsibility for my suggestion. Bazza

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I know you are correct. It is just a personal peeve of mine. And I love my Vegemite. Bazza

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The only ones that I have on my rig right now are from my recent install of nVidia Forceware 91.47 drivers, 55 of them and maybe 50MB, a drop in the bucket when one has 400GB space. The best way, for me at least, is to set a minimum size in search, say 10 MB, and check to see if you need it or not, I leave system files alone. I found some 20 GB of stuff that I don't want or that were duplicates. When one has a lot of space, one tends to get lax.

BTW, I use 'Agent Ransack' now as a search tool. It's way faster than waiting for the dog to poop. I haven't seen it available on MG's as it's a good and fast search utility besides being small, 790KB and most importantly crap free. It does have a small learning curve but nevertheless easy to use and way more powerful.

 

Thats what Im gonna do because knowing they're there is annoying me now. Thanks for the tip.

 

Try *.*_ in Agent Ransack. It gets thoroughly confused.

I agree that it is really fast and use it for most of my searches. Just not for *.*_ lol.

Sometimes it's so fast that you can't believe that it has run and I have to run it again, when 0 files found. lol.

Bazza

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Sorry for the annoyance. LOL.
Anuther bruther. Bazza

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