Deleting dubious directories. Danger?

[Marcus Severus]

Hi,

1st post but by not means the 1st peculiar issue of XP I have dealt with ;)

Anyone know for sure, On Win XP Home...

I have noticed that in the Windows folder there are a bunch of directories named using the format:

$NtUninstall + KB + some number

There are a couple of other ones also:

$hf_mig$

$MSI31Uninstall

$NtServicePackUninstall$

then the

$NtUninstallKB + a number

Why I care.

On this Win XP2 installation all the folders amount to 1GB+ of space in total(!?)

I understand that these have something to do with hotfixes downloaded and installed by the update service.

There are also a bunch of log files in the windows folder. These only amount to 11.4 MB but there are 187 of them.

The question:

Can any of these files/directories be burnt and stored offline without 'breaking' any of the essential functionality, or restore

capability of the installed OS (Win XP Home)?

If you are wondering exactly which files or what I am refering to, I have pre-empted this.

Two screengrabs for you:

The $NtUninstall + KB + some number folders:

Most of the 187 log files:

[andsome]

I seem to remember hearing that they are to do with SP2 update. I have them too, so do two friends. :D

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

These are uninstallers for all the Windows updates and hotfixes you have installed. If you are sure that you don't need to uninstall them, it's relatively safe to remove most of them (but not all!).

Saving them on an external disk before removing is definitely a good idea!

Use CCleaner to remove them; CCleaner knows which ones are safe to delete, and which ones to keep.