cleaning up after the software installer

[Bunzer]

I've learned a fair bit about the Thinkpad software installer today, so I thought I'd share it with all the people asking questions about which folders are safe to delete from the Ibmtools and Drivers directories. This is what I managed to work out by myself, so proceed with caution...

The \IBMTOOLS directory contains software which is pre-installed with Windows. According to posts in this forum, it should not be deleted, as it contains software which is difficult to replace/obtain. However, the \IBMTOOLS\DRIVERS directory contains a set of drivers current at the time of manufacture, and many may be out of date - more on this below.

The \DRIVERS directory also contains drivers, but these are updates to the original set, and may contain duplicates with every successive update. On my Thinkpad, the Software Installer application adds a subdirectory here for each new update.

After your drivers have been updated one or more times, your hard disk starts to fill up with driver archives. Arguably, this is a good thing, as you may want to revert to an older version, if you have problems with the current release. But, over time, you may find that you collect several versions of each driver, and you may be fairly sure that some are no longer needed.

When using the "Install or Upgrade" option of the Software Installer, the "Install Package" screen shows the "Available" and "Installed" versions of each package. You may not have noticed that, if you click on an available version number, you get a list of one or more versions available. If you wish to remove any older versions, make a note of the package name and (exact!) version numbers listed.

You may have noticed, when running the Software Installer, that it scans several (named) directories on your Thinkpad for available packages. It appears to do this by looking for XML files. I assumed that I could remove any folders containing "obsolete" packages by identifying them by their XML file.

I did this by searching (see * below) the C drive for *.XML files containing the version text string, veryifying the package location by opening the XML file in Internet Explorer and reading the package description and version number. I then opened the containing folder, noted its name from the address bar, went up one directory level and then deleted that folder (you could, of course, back-up the folder, if deletion seems a bit too permanent).

I did this on my Thinkpad this morning and managed to clear about a gigabyte of old packages from my 40GB hard drive.

As I said earlier: I worked this out myself, so if I'm wrong, please don't blame me!


(* I use the old-style Windows 2000 search on my XP computers - I think the new search stinks. I didn't test this procedure on the XP search. You can set the old-style search using TweakUI from Microsoft.)

[jdhurst]

I am always reluctant to dump stuff I may not be able to replace. In the folder called DRIVERS, I make two subfolders: PreLoad and WinXPP. I move all the original drivers into PreLoad and keep it (a princely sum of 26Mb of files). I keep only the latest copy of upgraded drivers in WinXPP, but I keep the original download of all drivers and all versions for all the ThinkPads and Desktops I have owned. That amounts to about 3 GB. I keep about 1Gb on my ThinkPad and the other 2Gb on a desktop storage drive. The IBMTOOLS folder is much bigger at 650Mb but I keep it anyway. ... JD Hurst

[juancferrer]

what about the apps folder inside ibmtools?? It seems to me that it's just old versions of stuff that i don't need (ibm msg center, norton AV, acrobat 6, ibm java, windvd, etc). This folder, for me at least, amounts to 1.2GB. I'm guessing it's safe to delete? or not? I can still get it back if i do a restore to factory settings, right?

[Bunzer]

I am always reluctant to dump stuff I may not be able to replace.

I have all the packages I need, yet I still managed to delete 1GB of stuff that is no longer current. I could have archived the old packages onto CDR, but, in my experience, old drivers tend to be a waste of space once the new ones have worked well for a few weeks.

[gleesonb]

interesting post bunzer, thanks.