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The following cleanup can save a lot of disk space, and generally improve matters, after you have successfully installed Service Pack 3. This will prevent you from reverting the installation, so be certain you are happy with the Service Pack installation prior to undertaking these changes.

[~Moderator comment: The following is based on the late MVP extraordinaire, DTS-L member, and AumHa Author/Contributor Alex Nichol's article Tidying Up After Installing SP2: http://aumha.org/win5/a/sp2faq.php#after]

• A very big System Restore point will have been made. Once a new regular size one has been made in the ordinary way, clean up by going to Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup and, in addition to the regular items, under ‘More Options,’ click the bottom button to remove all but the most recent restore point.

• Delete the hidden folder of files that would be restored by an uninstall: \Windows\$NTServicePackUninstall. Once this is done, if you try to use the ‘Remove’ for Service Pack 2 in Add/Remove Programs, that will fail and will offer to delete the entry.

• There may also be a large folder C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download, depending on how you did the installation. That can be deleted also.

• Check that the installation’s temporary folder got properly removed. It will be on the drive where you downloaded the setup files (probably C:) and will have a long name of random characters, such as C:\af74d61c43av. If it is still around, delete it.

• There will also be a large folder C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles. Do not delete this — it will be used in future by Windows File Protection — but on an NTFS disk you can compress it to save about 200MB of disk space. Right-click on it, select Properties, click the Advanced button, and select Compress.

• Clean out old Hotfix storage. The files used to uninstall updates to Windows can be deleted if you're confident that they will not have to be uninstalled in the future. These files can be found in the Windows folder with names similar to this, $NtUninstallKB123456$. They are hidden folders so make sure you enable viewing of hidden files and folders in Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View tab.

Note: Do not delete the $hf_mig$ folder. This folder will be used by future updates.

Here's a web site which provides an automated way of deleting these folders (Courtesy of Doug Knox, MS-MVP): http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm

Also see...

Remove Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs Registry entries
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Hotfix_backup.htm

• Now empty your Recycle Bin.

• Finally, defragment your primary hard drive.

And that is as much cleanup as I believe it is safe to do.

Also see MVP Jupiter Jones' article How can I save space after installing a Service Pack or other updates? => http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm

I want to emphasize Bill's caveat in bold above: If you delete these folders & files, you will NOT be able to uninstall WinXP SP3 and return to WinXP SP2, should the need arise.

Also keep in mind that if you upgraded to IE7 before you installed SP3, uninstalling/reinstalling IE7 (for whatever reason) would require that you first uninstall SP3. See:

IE and Windows XP Service Pack 3
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/0 ... xpsp3.aspx