Where has all the space gone?
No more hard disk space left? Frequent illegal operations? It’s time to clean up your hard drive

I n our November 1999 issue, we took you through the de– tails of installing and uninst–alling Windows applications. We had also seen how to get rid of digital debris from your precious hard disk real estate. Now let’s go a step further and find out what things may be hogging up your disk space and see if you can reclaim some of it. 

The old must make way for the new
Let’s say you’ve installed your copy of Windows over an older version—Windows 95 over Win 3.x, or Win 98 over Win 95 or Win 98 SE over Win 98. And let’s say you choose to keep the older version of Windows. Maybe because you subscribe to the belief that old is gold. Or maybe you’ve inherited your system from your older brother and you have no clue what belief he subscribes to. Whatever be the reason for choosing to keep the older version, you have to face the fact that a lot of your hard disk is being used up by it. If you have absolutely no use for it, it’s time for some uninstall.
Go to Start > Programs > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. See if there’s an entry for the older version of Windows. If it’s there hit the Add/Remove button, if you’re sure you don’t want to resurrect the ghost of your earlier version. 

If it’s Windows 98 that you’re trying to remove, here’s a quicker way. Select Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. Run Disk Cleanup. At the bottom of the list, there should be a “Delete Windows 98 uninstall information” entry. If it’s there, click on the box to select the option, and click the OK button. The amount of disk space saved would be fabulous—from about 35 MB to even more than 100 MB if you are removing Windows 98 after upgrading to Win 98 SE.

Throw out the tmp files 
Close all programs. Go to Windows Explorer and press the F3 key to open the Find dialog box. Enter *.tmp in the Named box. Make sure that just your C Drive is listed in the Look in box. Put a check in the box next to Include subfolders by clicking on the box. When tmp files appear, delete them.

Delete temp Net files 
Go to the Temporary Internet Files subfolder in Windows Explorer. Delete all the files here. You can also delete these files using Internet Explorer. Open IE. Choose Tools> Internet Options. Click on the Delete Files button.

Zap the bak files you don’t need
In the Find dialog box, enter *.bak in the Named box. Make sure that just your C Drive is listed in the Look in box. Put a check in the box next to Include subfolders by clicking on the box. All bak files will be searched out and you can delete them.

Your turn to take out the trash
Right-click on Recycle Bin on the desktop and choose Empty Recycle Bin from the drop-down menu. If you are using Norton Utilities to protect files in the Bin, delete those as well.