When trawling through your files many users may see in the Windows directory that there were a huge number of files $NTUNINSTALL... followed by a series of different numbers. These represent Windows automatic updates and some may go back many years. The question is: are they worth keeping?
According to advice that I received from a senior Microsoft developer these files should not be deleted. However, I asked that question shortly after XP was released and the underlying principle is the same even now. These uninstall files relate to security and other patches that have been automatically installed onto your computer and will be required in case you wish to roll back to some earlier point.
As you are unlikely to go back to a 2006 or even a 2007 version, all early folders can be deleted. Caution; be careful not to delete $hf_mig$ which has the date of the latest update performed on your computer. The folder itself may have been created a long time ago but the contents keep changing and it will be used for future updates.
I have deleted all but the current year on my test computer and there have been no problems, but this is a sample of one and I do not place too much emphasis on it. If you have very many GB free on your drive and the backup drive has adequate spare capacity then I would not bother deleting these. If your computer is stable then deleting all but the current restore point will free up more disk space. If you are running Vista then you can free up tens of GBs. This is something that I do every few months as when backing up to an image file, the resultant file will be much smaller and the process will finish sooner.
To perform this clean-up action open Windows Explorer and right-click on drive C, Properties, Disk Cleanup then click on the More Options tab and select System Restore and Cleanup. Answer Yes and click OK.
Author:-George Skarbek
According to advice that I received from a senior Microsoft developer these files should not be deleted. However, I asked that question shortly after XP was released and the underlying principle is the same even now. These uninstall files relate to security and other patches that have been automatically installed onto your computer and will be required in case you wish to roll back to some earlier point.
As you are unlikely to go back to a 2006 or even a 2007 version, all early folders can be deleted. Caution; be careful not to delete $hf_mig$ which has the date of the latest update performed on your computer. The folder itself may have been created a long time ago but the contents keep changing and it will be used for future updates.
I have deleted all but the current year on my test computer and there have been no problems, but this is a sample of one and I do not place too much emphasis on it. If you have very many GB free on your drive and the backup drive has adequate spare capacity then I would not bother deleting these. If your computer is stable then deleting all but the current restore point will free up more disk space. If you are running Vista then you can free up tens of GBs. This is something that I do every few months as when backing up to an image file, the resultant file will be much smaller and the process will finish sooner.
To perform this clean-up action open Windows Explorer and right-click on drive C, Properties, Disk Cleanup then click on the More Options tab and select System Restore and Cleanup. Answer Yes and click OK.
Author:-George Skarbek
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