IE7 & IE8 in Windows Directory

[Alfred Alonzo]

On Windows XP Professional with SP3 and all the updates maintained current
as they have been published and offered by Microsoft Update procedures :

I have these folders in the CWindows directory... ie7 ; ie7 updates ;
ie8 ; and ie8 updates. The ie7 folder is kind of small, at about 25 MV,
but
the ie7 updates folder is at about 290 MB. Since I am intending to stay
with IE8, because of security reasons, among other considerations, may I
simply omit the ie7 and ie7 updates folders? I would copy them to another
data medium for storage for a while - but I would appreciate any heads-up
if there may be some caveat.

I also have about a gigabyte of $NtUninstall[XXXXX]$ folders which go way
back in time...

I'm getting quite a bit of conflicting information from search engines, and
the Tom MSMVP tool did NOT work. Since everything is running fine, can I
eliminate those folders, and correlating folders from within $hf_mig$ ?

These take up significant space, especially if I would never intend to
uninstall any of Microsoft's updates which are working just fine as they
should.

I'm also wondering why Microsoft does not publish either a tool to clean
these old remnants, or some official instruction on how to accomplish this
major maintenance? Also, regarding SFC \scannow : I installed this OS
from the raw release with no service packs. As each of the service packs
came out, I went with the program. Now, when I run the SFC procedure, I
would require an SP3 disc (which I manage to do) or else I get all those
incorrect disc error messages - which accomplishes very little if one
merely clicks-through with the original OS disc. Why doe Microsoft not
publish a downloadable file for verifiable Genuine Microsoft users to
deploy with an appropriate SFC procedure which works? It seems like it
would be so easy to do for them.

OK, so, delete old ie7 remnant folders; old update folders/files; and
access a current and appropriate bundle of system files to run the SFC, or
similar to SFC, procedure.

Thank you.

 

[Rick Chauvin]

"Alfred Alonzo" <Alfred_Alonzo@everywhere.all> wrote in message
news:Xns9DAC14EF7ECECPLUNDER@193.202.122.67
> On Windows XP Professional with SP3 and all the updates maintained
> current as they have been published and offered by Microsoft Update
> procedures :
>
> I have these folders in the CWindows directory... ie7 ; ie7 updates ;
> ie8 ; and ie8 updates. The ie7 folder is kind of small, at about 25 MV,
> but
> the ie7 updates folder is at about 290 MB. Since I am intending to stay
> with IE8, because of security reasons, among other considerations, may I
> simply omit the ie7 and ie7 updates folders? I would copy them to
> another data medium for storage for a while - but I would appreciate any
> heads-up if there may be some caveat.

The short answer is Yes if you are certain you won't need to uninstall IE7,
then you can delete the ie7 folders and its contents.
There is a long answer... ...contained in all the websites that say don't.

fwiw, I removed those folders a long time ago.

> I also have about a gigabyte of $NtUninstall[XXXXX]$ folders which go way
> back in time...
>
> I'm getting quite a bit of conflicting information from search engines,

I've read them all !

Yes there is conflicting information out there, some have merit under their
own conditons and reasonings.

fwiw, I removed the contents of that folder a long time ago without
incident.

> and the Tom MSMVP tool did NOT work. Since everything is running fine,
> can I eliminate those folders, and correlating folders from within
> $hf_mig$ ?

The best tools I've found to do (there may be more) but I used both of
these two tools.

xp_remove_hotfix_backup.exe (created by MVP Doug Knox)
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm
&
UninstallRemover.vbs (also created by an MVP Torgeir Bakken )
http://winhlp.com/node/81

I've found while the xp_remove_hotfix_backup.exe removes all the KB ones, I
found that the UninstallRemover.vbs did some others, and iirc I manually
did some others that neither did.

> These take up significant space, especially if I would never intend to
> uninstall any of Microsoft's updates which are working just fine as they
> should.

...here's some more interesting reading

http://www.pagestart.com/hfmigpart1.html

http://www.pagestart.com/hfmigpart2.html


> I'm also wondering why Microsoft does not publish either a tool to clean
> these old remnants, or some official instruction on how to accomplish

That won't happen for many very good reasons.

> this major maintenance? Also, regarding SFC \scannow : I installed
> this OS from the raw release with no service packs. As each of the
> service packs came out, I went with the program. Now, when I run the
> SFC procedure, I would require an SP3 disc (which I manage to do) or
> else I get all those incorrect disc error messages - which accomplishes
> very little if one merely clicks-through with the original OS disc. Why
> doe Microsoft not publish a downloadable file for verifiable Genuine
> Microsoft users to deploy with an appropriate SFC procedure which works?
> It seems like it would be so easy to do for them.
>
> OK, so, delete old ie7 remnant folders; old update folders/files; and
> access a current and appropriate bundle of system files to run the SFC,
> or similar to SFC, procedure.

I can't answer about running SFC and I personally don't use or have need
for it.

But back to the IE7 folder and the contents of $hf_mig$
Again the short answer is Yes, but there is that long answer too.

Read up and discern for yourself ! Always have a backup plan.

Yes there are those that will clamor don't do it for this reason or that
and may be good advice for newbies and certain situations, but if you are
experienced and in firm control of your computer environment in all ways,
which includes one having complete backup C partition image abilities,
better yet a disk-to-disk clone of the entire HD (not that you would need
to restore by doing the above procedures) ...but the point is no matter
what you do that if you even got into a jam, then having that ability to
re-image is invaluable.....

Rick

ps
There are many more links that I could give that cover all of this in
various ways and angles, some contradict the other in theory, you'll need a
week of time to sift through them while having the technical knowledge and
experience to know what it all means in the first place - your on your own.

>
> Thank you.