T41: lost? 9gb during windows update?

[vwbmw]

Last week I bought a T41 2373-8RU from a local off-lease reseller. Build date Oct'04, with XPpro (not SP2). With recovery partition, only 34-35gb of '40' available. First thing I do, before loading any software, I hook up to DSL and run Windows Update(Express). Finds 64 updates ("58mb"). Let it do its thing for 1.5 hours. Result: only 26gb left available on HD!! What happened??

I next updated to XP SP2 (1.5 hours), installed ZoneAlarm, Spybot, AdAware, AVG, Firefox, MS Office, PSElements ..all of which occupied only <2gb more. But whatever happened to my scarce HD space during the initial 'update'? Should I re-wipe it all via Factory Recovery, and if so, what to avoid, or do differently to get a gb-thrifty HD result?

[vwbmw]

Have I posted in the wrong forum (no replies)? I'm willing to redo Factory Reinstall (I used Access IBM key, not F11), but first I'd want to know how avoid losing 9gb to Windows updates. Should I have skipped the misc updates (n=64)to the Oct'04-era factory XP and just downloaded SP2 (if allowed)?

[cmarti]

Have I posted in the wrong forum (no replies)?

Try here:

Windows OS

[vwbmw]

Thanks, cmarti. I got a useful response in Windows OS forum.

Mod Edit: No cross-posting allowed. Please make an effort to post in the correct forum. If you feel you posted in the wrong forum, then ask a Mod to move it for you.

[cmarti]

Thanks, cmarti. I got a useful response in Windows OS forum.

You are welcome.