Tidying Up After Installing SP2

Installing SP2 leaves a lot of space on your hard disk taken up by files you would only ever need if you were to uninstall SP2. Once you are sure you are happy with the upgrade, do the following:

* A very big System Restore point will have been made. Once a new regular size one has been made in the ordinary way, clean up by going to Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup and, under ‘More Options,’ click the bottom button to remove all but the most recent restore point.

* Delete the hidden folder of files that would be restored by an uninstall: C:\Windows\$NTServicePackUninstall. Once this is done, if you try to use the ‘Remove’ for Service Pack 2 in Add/Remove Programs, that will fail and will offer to delete the entry.

* There may also be a large folder C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download, depending on how you did the installation. That can be deleted also.

* Check that the installation’s temporary folder got properly removed. It will be on the drive where you downloaded the setup files (probably C:) and will have a long name of random letters. If it is still around, delete it. And burn the downloaded file to a CD so as to have it if you ever need to reinstall.

* There will also be a large folder C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles. Do not delete this — it will be used in future by Windows File Protection — but on an NTFS disk you can compress it to save about 200MB of disk space. Right-click on it, select Properties, click the Advanced button, and select Compress.