Clean Up Your Hard Drive After Upgrading Windows

Recover hard disk space by deleting unneeded uninstall folders; give pop-up help the boot; get one-click access to your configuration settings.

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After installing Windows XP Service Pack 2, I found folders inside C:\Windows with such names as "$NtUninstallKB810217$". Each holds more than 800MB of files. Can I get rid of them?

Ibrahim A. Al-Harun, Chittagong, Bangladesh

When you update Windows 2000 or XP, the update program often saves uninstall information to a folder such as the ones you describe. If you're sure you want the update, remove its uninstall folder.

To see your PC's saved uninstall folders, open Windows Explorer to C:\Windows (in Windows XP) or C:\WINNT (in Windows 2000); you may need to click Show the contents of this folder. If you don't see any folders, select View, Folder Options, click the View tab, select Show hidden files and folders, and click OK.

The Windows Service Pack uninstall is in the folder $NtServicePackUninstall$ (see FIGURE 1

Figure 1: Save disk space by deleting the uninstall folders of old Windows updates you're sure you want to keep.

). Others are named $NtUninstallKBnnnnnn$ or $NtUninstallQnnnnnn$ (each n represents a digit).

If the folder is more than a few weeks old, you can remove it without risk. You then won't be able to remove the associated update--not necessarily a bad thing. Read about updates before you remove their uninstallers at support.microsoft.com/?kbid=nnnnnn ("nnnnnn" is the six-digit number in the folder name).

To get rid of an uninstall folder, select it in Windows Explorer, press Delete, and confirm your decision. The uninstall may still be listed in the Control Panel Add or Remove Programs applet, however. To remove it, select the program and click Remove. An error message will ask whether you want to delete the entry from the list. Click Yes.

No Pop-Up Help

Can I disable those annoying descriptions that pop over whatever I'm pointing at?

Robert Horton, Gig Harbor, Washington

These small pop-up windows go by a number of names: Tooltips, InfoTips, ScreenTips, and balloon help (the generic name). There's no universal method for turning all of these "helpers" off, but I'll outline a couple of ways to deactivate the most common of the pop-ups.

To turn pop-up windows off in Word, Excel, and other Microsoft Office applications, select Tools, Customize, Options, uncheck Show ScreenTips on toolbars, and click Close. You'll have to repeat this procedure in every Office application where you don't want tips to pop up.

If you don't want to be told what icon you're pointing to when you're in Windows Explorer or on the desktop, open Explorer or any folder window and select Tools, Folder Options, View. Scroll to the bottom of the Advanced settings list, and uncheck Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items. Click OK.

Shortcut to msconfig

How do I put a shortcut to the System Configuration Utility (msconfig) on my Start menu so I don't have to type "msconfig" in the Run box?

Leslie D. Waters, San Jose, California

Right-click the desktop and select New, Shortcut to start the Create Shortcut wizard. In the 'Command line' field, enter msconfig (in Windows 98 and Me), or c:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\msconfig (in XP). (Note that Windows 2000 lacks the System Configuration Utility.) Finish stepping through the wizard, making your own choices. Once you have the shortcut on your desktop, simply drag it to your Start menu.

CDs Block Wireless

Is the signal strength of your home's wireless network less than it should be? Is the notebook in one room unable to make contact with the desktop in the other? Reader Don Jones discovered a surprising cause of this problem in his own home: his CD collection. "Those culprits are made from a thin sheet of a metallic substance sandwiched between a couple of layers of plastic. CDs are basically big signal reflectors, making them as reflective of radio signals as they are of light." By moving his CDs away from the network's operating area, he was able to improve his 802.11g network considerably.