Question: About "Uninstall" files...

[springer]

Came across this article today...

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119281,00.asp

Essentially says that all those "Uninstall" folders regarding Microsoft undates, critical or otherwise, are wasting space on harddrives.

I've often wondered about this, considering that I have only a 6 gig harddrive. Why would one want to uninstall these updates? Especially after months and years?

If one wanted to clear these from one's system, is this article representing the best way to do this? Any recommendations from experts here on this?

[Arin]

dear springer, it is not wise to uninstall critical updates, however, if you are short of
space you can delete some updates you don't need. yes you can safely delete those folders but be warned that if the updates create problems, you won't be able to uninstall or rollback then. i'll suggest you free up the disk by deleting temp files and
disabling system restore.

[springer]

Hi...

Ultimately I got a few opinions on this. Using Win2K.

What I've noticed over time is that following major updates from MS, like SP4, the "Add/Remove Software" menu changes. Presumably previous individual updates that are included in the major package fall off the menu.

So what I did is split the difference, so to speak.

I have about 30 references in that menu to uninstalls for critical/software updates, listed by MS's reference nos. Using Windows Explorer, went to WINNT\ and found the list of "uninstall" folders related to these updates...about 80 of them. While they fall off the menu, they don't fall off the harddrive.

I matched up those update folders to the "Add/Remove" menu and deleted all the rest, many going back as far as 2001, and about 50 in total. The assumption being that these were now obsolete, made so primarily by Service Packs.

Freed up 130 megs of space on my drive.

Reality is, I figure, if there are going to be any conflicts with an update, they will show up relatively immediate to the initial install. And a year later, I would have no idea of the sourse of a conflict anyway, and thus which update to uninstall.

Think I'm going to make this part of my maintenance following major service pack installations from now on.

Cheers!