What can I delete to salvage some HDD space please?

[GlynH]

Looking on my X41T and its meagre 40GB HDD with <5GB free (!) I see the following folders;

CMPNENTS: MediaCTR, NetFX, Tablet PC, 191MB
DRIVERS: TPBTooth, Win, 232MB
IBMTOOLS: Apps, Drivers, OS Fixes, Register, RRUPatch, 1.05GB
SWSHARE: 19.1MB
SWTOOLS: Drivers, 232KB

Is it safe to delete these?

I know some of them would have been used by the old Software Installer - why oh why did Lenovo replace that wonderful program with the next-to-useless, crappy System Update?

I am looking to free up a bit of space on the HDD but not at the expense of usability.

I am guessing I might make things akward for myself if I deleted the i386 folder?

[RealBlackStuff]

Even if you would delete some files, you are alreadu at the max. for that HD.
See this post http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=70458
where they changed the 40GB hard drive for a 120GB HD
and some more info here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71722

[rkawakami]

You might also try some of the things outlined in this recent post: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=72044

As far as being "safe" to delete those folders, I don't know if there's any files in them that are actually being used by the system. I suppose that you can launch the Registry Editor (regedit) and search for strings such as "c:\drivers\" and "c:\swtools\", etc, and see if there's any references to those folders. I'd also say that only the first three folders would yield any real benefit since we're talking about 1.4GB in total. Clearing out the system restore points might free up around 4GB, given the size of your hard drive.

edit: And to answer your question about the I386 folder, you can read these:

http://ask-leo.com/can_i_move_or_delete ... space.html
http://www.andybrain.com/archive/mb/i386-folder.htm

Most of my systems do not have the I386 folder on them. I rely on complete disk images to save my bacon in case something goes wrong with the disk drive. Since that folder might only take 1GB and if you do not have a restore CD, I'd leave it alone.

[TomKroscavage]

Try SpaceMonger
bold_fortune is the master at slimming down XP.

[GomJabbar]

I do believe you can delete at least IBMTOOLS and DRIVERS. AFAIK, these are just directories for drivers and software installation files, and are not used after the drivers and software are installed. I 'think' SWSHARE and SWTOOLS can be deleted as well, but I am less sure. The CMPNENTS directory I am entirely unfamiliar with.

Caveat: If you use System Update, it may look in the DRIVERS directory for installed drivers and software. This is not really a problem however, as these drivers can be downloaded and installed manually without using System Update. Personally, I have not used System Update in several years.

I suggest though, with USB keys as cheap as they are nowadays, why not copy those directories to a USB key, then delete them off the hard drive? Alternatively you could copy them to DVD's or CD's.

There are also Microsoft files that can be relatively safely deleted. These would include uninstall files for all their updates and service packs. See following links.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956324
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm

[TomKroscavage]

My XP install has office, Autocad, Photoshop CS3 Adobe Illustrator and much much more. It is 2.3GB and just over 23,000 files it is great for virus scanning and defragging. I did most of the slimming with spacemonger. You wont believe how many programs install MOVIE tutorials, huge PDFs, Huge DOC files worthless help files. I can't stress enough how helpful spacemonger is for what you want to do, and it is free.

[andrzej]

FYI su has own dir
BTW in my case
xp C:\Program Files\Lenovo\System Update\session\ »» 2.98 GB
vista 64 C:\Program Files (x86)\Lenovo\System Update\session\»» 2.59 GB
IMVHO not recommend to clean

[Marin85]

Try SpaceMonger
bold_fortune is the master at slimming down XP.

I wonder if there is similar guide or software for Vista (vLite doesn´t really make a good job as it makes things buggy and sometimes even slower, which is not supposed to be the case...). I wish there was bold_fortune´s guide for Vista too