Lost disk space after incomplete SP2 installation

[friend2u]

I tried to install SP2 and maybe I shoudn't have done that because even after installing all my apps on my D Drive (OS XP is on C Drive) I still only had 15% of 13.9GB which represented my C Drive partition. The installation did not complete
and I believe it was due to insufficient disk space since it did warn me It was getting low. I saw something saying that SP2 was a 75MB download but after reading more on it I see that the uninstall files are around 400MB. I suppose I could move my partition which will cost me around 40 bucks for the software.

Anyway the problem seems to be that although SP2 did not finish installing there must be a load of incomplete files on my C Drive somewhere since I am now down to 1.5GB free. I cant do a system restore since I tried it and it wont work. I cant find the alleged $ Net...........$ folder that SP 2 installs to so no clue there. Any idea where the files might be and how to find/delete them ?

 

[Justin]

Look for a directory called "ServicePackFiles" inside your Windows directory. That is where SP2 dumps files ultimately, and if it exists you can safely delete it to free up space.

There's also a lot of other places you can trash some files to make enough room for SP2 without needing to buy any software. Make sure that you have hidden and system files visible, first, and then you can take a look in these places:

* Temporary Internet Files for all users, located under Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings
* Temporary directory for all users, located under Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings
* Temp directory for windows, located under the Windows directory
* eHome directory in Windows directory - safe to delete
* Web directory under Windows directory -safe to delete
* Media directory under Windows directory - safe to delete if you don't use windows sounds
* Help directory under Windows directory - contents safe to delete if you don't mind disabling the built in help
* Any of the so-named $NT_UNINSTALL$-esque directories in the Windows directory. They show up in blue as they are compressed by default. As long as you understand that you cannot remove a hotfix once you delete these, you can wipe those as well

If you are really strapped for space, you can also trash the contents of the hidden directory "dllcache" inside Windows/system32. It contains only backup files of critical system files.

If you do all that and save the SP2 executable to your D: drive odds are you'll have enough space to install.