Remove All But XP

I have noticed that my computer has become very slow over the past month. I have installed and uninstalled a lot of stuff. My hd shows more occupied space than it should. I assume some of the files from removed programs are still there. Is there a way to format everything except windows XP? I do not want to go through the trouble of re-installing it and downloading all the updates again. Would removing all my programs and then reinstalling them help? Are there any programs that can do this for me? Thanks, all help is appreciated.

 

No, you cannot do what you're asking.

Although the missing space could be from tons of things. Including virtual memory/page files. By default you'll have a page file on your computer that takes up double the amount of ram in your system. Which for a lot of people means it takes up a gig itself.

There is also temp folders on the computer which sometiems don't get cleaned out properly "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temp" is a bad one for that.

If you look throug hthe site there are a few tweaking programs that can help you clean up a bit. The only way to really clean everything up nicely is through a reformat though.

 

Aren't there programs to clean up leftovers like that? Just looks for files that aren't associated to any program any more and kills them?

 

ccleaner and tweaknow reg cleaner are both good cleanup tools

 

Kinda, but nothing that really works to get everything. I mean you can't just scan for files that arn't in use by a program and delete them. First of detecting if a program uses it, isn't really easy and in some cases the only way to tell is run every program and see if it was used. But more importantly there are text documents, pictures, and video which arn't part of programs and you don't want to delete those either.

So while there are some programs to help clean up a bit, you'll never get one that gets everything. The only way to do that is to reinstall.