WindowsXP brings us amazing visual enjoyment and colorful functions, but at the same time it mercilessly devours our hard disk space. Under normal circumstances, after installing windowsxp, it will take up about 1.5GB of hard disk space, which is much more than win98 and win200. If you install a lot of applications later and don't take corresponding measures, you will soon find that the remaining hard disk space will be less and less! The purpose of this paper is to help you recover the wasted hard disk space of windowsXp and make it serve us better under the premise of ensuring the normal work of the system.
Because some of the following operations involve some system files and hidden files of windowsxp, but they are invisible by default in xp, we can set them in Control Panel → Folder Options → View tab, remove the check boxes before "Hide protected operating system files (recommended)" and "Hide extensions of known file types", and click OK to exit.
I. System settings
1. System restore
The system restore function first appeared in Microsoft's windows me, which can undo our harmful changes to the computer and restore its settings and performance. System restore can return the computer to an earlier time (called a restore point) without losing our recent work, such as documents, emails, favorite lists and history. This is a good thing, but after a long time, you will find that it consumes amazing hard disk space. If you want to use system restore correctly without taking up too much hard disk space, you can only set it manually.
Click Start → All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → System Restore to enter the main window of system restore, and click "System Restore Settings" on the left to enter the window of system restore settings. First, select the "Turn off system restore on all drives" item, and then click OK, so that xp will delete the backup system restore point and free up hard disk space.
Next, we will re-enable System Restore. As mentioned above, we will delete the item "Turn off system restore on all drives" and re-enable system restore. Then, according to your situation, click the "Settings" button below to enter the settings of individual drives and turn off the system restore in the non-system area. When the system restore function is turned on, the system area restore cannot be turned off, but we can set the size of the hard disk space occupied by it, which is generally set to 5%.
In addition, in the windowsxp disk cleaning system, unnecessary restore points can also be cleaned regularly to free up hard disk space. Before installing some large software and updating hardware drivers, restore points must be created manually to prevent accidents.
2. Page file
The page file is actually a virtual memory file used by xp. You can see a file named pagefile.sys in the root directory of the system area, but xp always sets a large default value for security, which wastes a lot of hard disk space. In fact, we can set its value lower.
Enter Control Panel → System → Advanced → Performance → Settings → Advanced → Virtual Memory → Change, and come to the Virtual Memory Settings window. First, determine the drive letter where the paging file is located, and then disable all paging files on other drives. According to Microsoft's suggestion, the page file should be set to 1.5 times the memory capacity, but if your memory is large, it will occupy a considerable space, so it is suggested that if the memory capacity is below 256MB, it should be set to 1.5 times; If it is above 5 12MB, it is completely feasible to set it to half the memory capacity, and the middle setting is the same as the memory capacity. Of course, if your memory is above 1G, you can completely avoid page files.
3.hiberfil.sys file
After installing xp on some newer motherboards with STR function, there will be a hiberfil.sys file in the root directory of the system area, the size of which is the same as the memory capacity. What is this document? It turns out that this is a file with xp hibernation function occupying hard disk space (windowsxp hibernation function is turned on by default). When the computer is in hibernation, all the contents in the memory will be saved to the hard disk, and the computer will be shut down. After the computer is turned on, all programs and documents opened when it is turned off will be restored to the desktop.
Start-up-Hold down the shift key when turning off the computer, and you will see the hibernation option. If you don't use this function often, you should turn it off in Control Panel → Power Options → Hibernation to free up hard disk space, and then turn it on when you need it.
Second, the system file
1. Delete driver backup
Windowsxp comes with a large number of hardware drivers, so we only use some needed drivers, and the redundant drivers can be completely deleted. Just find the file \dirver cache\driver.cab in the installation directory of windowsxp and delete it, which can save more than 70 MB of hard disk space, but make sure that the driver of your device has been installed completely before operation.
2. Delete the standby dynamic link library (dll file) and system exe file.
In previous versions of Windows, installing software other than the operating system may overwrite some privileged system files, such as dynamic link libraries (. Dll files) and executable files (. Exe file). After overwriting the system files, the system performance will be unpredictable, the program will be unstable and the operating system will fail. In Windows XP, Windows file protection can prevent protected system files from being replaced, for example. sys，。 dll，。 ocx，。 ttf，。 Fenghe Exe file. Windows file protection runs in the background, which can protect all files installed by Windows installer. These files are saved under \system32\dllcache\ in the installation directory of windowsxp. Windows file protection can detect attempts by other programs to replace or move protected system files. Windows File Protection can detect the digital signature of a file to determine whether the version of a new file is the correct Microsoft version. If the file version is incorrect, Windows File Protection will replace the files in the Dllcache folder or the backup files stored in the Windowsxp installation disk. So we can completely delete the backup files in dllcache, about 250 MB. When you need to copy files for windows file protection, just put the xp installation disk into the CD-ROM drive, or specify the path of windowsxp backed up on the hard disk.
3. Delete some unused input methods
In fact, the unnecessary input methods we deleted in the text and language service window were not really deleted from the hard disk. In the control panel → regional and language options → language tab, the check box in front of "Install East Asian language files" was deleted. Click OK, delete unnecessary languages according to the prompts, and then restart to \ime\ in the installation directory of windowsxp. Just delete three directories, namely, chtime, imjp8_ 1 and imkr6_ 1, which are traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean respectively. Congratulations, if you only use one input method, you can save 80MB of hard disk space.
Third, comprehensive articles.
The temporary files generated by 1.windows XP can be cleaned with windows' own disks, including some items such as recycle bin and temporary Internet files. You can clean it regularly according to your own situation, or you can use third-party software such as Super Rabbit, Windows Optimizer, CustomerXP, etc. With the help of third-party software, you can also clean up some junk files generated by the system and clear some historical records. The usage method will not be described here.
2. If your computer is only used by you, you'd better set up an account yourself, because every time you set up an account, there will be a folder named after the account you set up in the \ documents and settings \ installation directory of windowsxp, which contains some information of this account, including favorites, documents, history, system setting information and so on. The space it occupies over time can not be underestimated, and the solution.
3. In Control Panel → Add or Remove Programs → Add/Remove windows Components, delete components that you never use in windowsxp.
4. Convert your file system to NTFS. NTFS file system is much better than FAT file system in security, stability and saving hard disk space. You can run the convert.exe command at Start → All Programs → Accessories → Command Prompt, and enter convert/? You can see detailed help, but friends with average computer level, please don't use it easily.