Messages

1

General Computer Support / Re: Help with .msp & .msi files in the WINDOWS/Installer folder

« on: March 23, 2012, 11:46:19 am »

Shane,

Thank you for the prompt response.

I completely agree with you.  I'd love to reinstall, but my friend is very concerned about not being able to get the pc as it once was...   It's actually her mom's laptop, and they don't have any of the CDs for programs they currently have installed there.  I've tried suggesting alternative software (even free!), to no avail...

I'll definitely run the idea of replacing the HD/RAM with them...   I'm sure I can convince them to at least do that.

Thanks again for all your help.

Y&V

2

General Computer Support / Help with .msp & .msi files in the WINDOWS/Installer folder

« on: March 23, 2012, 08:36:24 am »

First of all, thank you to everyone in advance...   I'm at my wit's end.

I'm working on a friend's computer, (running Windows XP SP3).  She complained that it had slowed down to a crawl.  Turns out that out of a 30 GB hard drive, there was only 400 MB left of free space!  I ran scans (McAfee Stinger, MSE, Clamwin, S&DS, etc...), and found no issues with viruses, though there was some adware I removed, (mostly browser toolbars).  After running a couple of cleanup tools (CCleaner, Revo), I managed to free a whopping 1GB of space....    (-____________-)

Using Windirstat, I found that the WINDOWS/Installer folder takes up 13 GB of space!  There are over 5K .msp/.msi/.tmp files there.  I thought about using the Microsoft uninstall cleanup tool, but found it had been retired...?   Used their new Fix It portable tool, but only managed to remove a couple of items, (Revo did most of the job already, I suppose).

So...  What can I do now?  I've researched the topic, and mostly I get warnings about being careful as to what/how I delete from that folder...  Going in there and nuking the whole bit seems dangerous at best, yet I can't figure out how to tell what's safe to delete and what's not...   Any ideas/suggestions?

Reinstalling Windows seems to be out of the question since my friend lost the CD (of course) a while back.

Thanks again,

Y&V