On 2013-12-06 13:01, joe@actionline.com wrote:
>>> On my wife's win-xp laptop, a huge number of files seem
>>> to have shown up and I have no idea why or what they are for.
>>> Hundreds of them seem to be in these sub-directories:
>>> C:\I386\IIS6.CAB
>>> C:\I386\COMPDATA
>>> C:\IBMWORK\XPLOCALE
>>> C:\IBM\WORK\QVIDEO
> but I still don't understand if it would be relatively
> safe to just remove all those excess files in those directories?

If you have a recent full backup of the Windows machine's disk, you
could just delete all those files, then restart the Windows machine.  If
it fails to start or refuses to work properly, restore from your full
backup, and all you've lost is some time.  I like the "partimage" tool
(available on SysRescCD ,
http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage among other places) for
making full backups of a disk.  There are other options.

Of course, I've done this multiple times, occasionally having the
Windows machine barf upon reboot.  The backup/restore via partimage can
take anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes depending on how fast the disks
are, but it only takes about 2 minutes of pushing keys; the rest is
watching progress bars.  I have not had backup/restore via partimage
fail.  Caveat User anyway and note that YMMV.

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