Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I just got my new T61 and noticed that there are two directories in C:\, namely SWSHARE and SWTOOLS. After running HijackThis, I noticed that nothing running was located in either of these folders, so I'm wondering if they are really necessary.

Has anyone deleted them and experienced no problems?

You'll find some of the "free" applications in there like diskeeper etc.

If you did a clean install not using the recovery partition/disks you'd not be able to get some of the stuff there back.

Best idea is to burn them to a DVD before deleting just incase

They contain a lot of drivers and ThinkVantage stuff that you might want to reinstall sometime. I wouldn't touch them unless you're desperately short of disk space.

Similar question, I was just looking at folders and also wondered about:

Icons (a single bmp icon, no idea where it came from, dated a few years ago)

Intel (contains a log folder with two logs, one called: IntelGFX.log and one called: IntelChipset.log, both dated a while back -- will there ever be more intel logs? could it create a new folder if it had to generate one? I hate having extra stuff in the c drive)

VALUEADD (seems to be nothing?)

The Icons folder exist on both my desktop and laptop. I never bothered to trace it, because *nobody* could be *that* short of space.

Valueadd is stuff that other manufacturers frequently install but IBM never did. You can very safely delete Valueadd.
... JDH

I was wondering: are there backups of the SWSHARE and SWTOOLS in the recovery partition? I plan on keeping that, or at least burning it to CD+DVD.

Thanks

I know you can safely delete C:IBMTOOLS/APPs - this folder contains setup files. I deleted them and saved almost 1gb of hard drive space. Although this is not a lot of space but it also saved me a couple of minutes on resuce and recovery back up. instead of taking 15 minutes I now do it in 10...

EDIT I have recently deleted IBMTOOLS and IBMWORK. Seems like both are only set up files. However when I deleted SWTOOLs problems began to arise when starting R&R.

My main concern was not really HDD space; I have a 100GB external Seagate which I can use as an archive. Rather, I just like to have my system looking clean, so I decided to mark the folders as hidden.
Cheap "fix," I know

rarirurero, I totally understand. It's like having someone else dump their laundry on the floor of your home/apartment. I know we need the program files and a few others (or our laptops are plastic bricks instead of something useful) but I want the rest of it clean with folders I put up.

rarirurero wrote:Hi, I just got my new T61 and noticed that there are two directories in C:\, namely SWSHARE and SWTOOLS. After running HijackThis, I noticed that nothing running was located in either of these folders, so I'm wondering if they are really necessary.

Has anyone deleted them and experienced no problems?

I have done it many many times. You can take out
a) SWSHARE
b) SWTOOLS
c) drivers
d) valueadd
e) CMPENTS (if you have a tablet)
f) SUPPORT
g) I386

a) to f) comes from your hidden recovery partition, they contains existing and new versions of Thinkvantage and miscellaneous files that you install from hidden partition or upgrade using system upgrade.

g) comes from window where it is mostly useless.

To delete it, first you move ALL of these directories to the trashcan and reboot. If your system don't crash, you can safely empty the trashcan.

rarirurero wrote:My main concern was not really HDD space; I have a 100GB external Seagate which I can use as an archive. Rather, I just like to have my system looking clean, so I decided to mark the folders as hidden.
Cheap "fix," I know

Intead of hidding or deleting it, I sometimes create a folder "Lenovo" inside my Document and then dump all the folders there.

Then go to the environment inside control panel->system->advance and you change the default path to the new folder. Next time System Upgrade or Software Installer looks, they will find the right place. A bit troublesome but it was clean.

In later stage, I just delete the whole bunch since they are useless.

Ideasmiths wrote: I have done it many many times. You can take out
a) SWSHARE
b) SWTOOLS

deleting "a" and "b" has caused me problems. I would not recommand deleting them. I am looking forward for anyone to confirm i386 and what those files are exactly used for.

i386 is folder where are the files required to install Windows XP. When Windows is installed, you do not need them.

I believe SWTOOLS is what used to be IBMTOOLS and contains all the instlal files for all the Thinkpad utilities. If you really have to then delete it. If you do, however, you'll have to go to the IBM website to download any of the apps should you ever need to install them again.

pipspeak wrote:I believe SWTOOLS is what used to be IBMTOOLS and contains all the instlal files for all the Thinkpad utilities. If you really have to then delete it. If you do, however, you'll have to go to the IBM website to download any of the apps should you ever need to install them again.

in my thinkpad SWTOOLS and SWSHARE only take out <1mb of disk space. when these folders are deleted it causes problems for my thinkvantage apps. I guess I got my thinkpad during a weird transition period.

by the way somebody should move this thread to "Thinkpad - General HARDWARE/SOFTWARE questions"