[dwhartt]

My IBM T40 laptop is connected to a docking station. I got a message that said my disk space was dangerously low. A year or so ago, the PC started hanging during a re-boot. In researching the space problem, I found a way to fix the re-boot problem by upgrading the BIOS. I also found where most of the space had gone. The folder - c:\windows\installer - has over 2000 files with a type of Windows Installer Patch and takes up over 20GB of space.

When maintenance was automatically sent by Microsoft overnight and required a re-boot, the PC would hang and the only way I could get it to come up was to take it off the docking station, take out the battery, reinsert the battery and then re-boot off of the docking station. I think what started happening was the maintenance was then not able to clean up files. Does anyone know what these files are and if they can be deleted safely? They have names like 1aca5349 and 1b1cec9d. I looked on another PC without this problem and there are several of these types of files but only 20 or so, not 2000+.

I downloaded ccleaner and ran the analyze function. It found about 2GB of what it considered old or unused files. However, a lot of them were files I want to keep. It did not identify any files in c:\windows\installer where the 20 GB of files are that I would like to know what they are and if it is safe to delete them. This is what the directory entries look like.

c:\windows\installer\1afe978b 5,092 KB Windows Installer Patch 1/14/2008 4:53 PM
1afe979b 12,213 KB Windows Installer Patch 7/30/2008 8:50 AM

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Hello,
Did you disagree with the answers given In this forum?
I have to wonder why you are jumping to different forums for the same issue.

[hfcg]

Hello,
Did you disagree with the answers given In this forum?
I have to wonder why you are jumping to different forums for the same issue.

[dwhartt]

yes, I disagreed. The response did not address my issue. I tried the suggestion but it did not answer what the excessive files were and whether they could be deleted. I responded but there was no reply. I waited several days and then decided to try another forum.

[Essexboy]

If the are installer MSP files then this may work as I have just helped clear 20Gb from another system

Download and install the MSI Cleanup utility

This will create a new folder in program files

Then click start > run and type or copy/paste in the following

"C:\Program Files\Windows Installer Clean Up\msizap" G!

and as the name suggests it will zap the unneeded msp files that are not registered

Information about the problem can be found Here

Let me know how that goes

[hfcg]

yes, I disagreed. The response did not address my issue. I tried the suggestion but it did not answer what the excessive files were and whether they could be deleted. I responded but there was no reply. I waited several days and then decided to try another forum.

That is a good answer.
I believe that Essexboy has given you the best answer.
You can also right click this folder,
Select properties,
And select compress this folder.
If you do this on the remaining files (in the folder) than you can free up some more disc space.
There are other ways to free up some disc space, I will get to that after you have applied the fix you have been given.

[dwhartt]

Thank you very much. I downloaded the MSI Cleanup Utility, ran it as you instructed and it deleted almost all of the installer patches. Everything seems to be running fine so far. I got back almost 20GB of space. Thank you for reading my issue and giving me a relevant answer.

[Essexboy]

Glad to be of assistance. Stick around there is a lot more interesting stuff here