De-Cluttering Hard Drive of Old OS

[yellowduke]

I was deleting some old programs from my laptop the other day and came across the old Windows ME OS. I upgraded to XP Home Edition using the upgrade version a couple of years ago. Now I was tempted to delete the ME files but erring on caution I thought it better to ask around first. Is it safe to do this? Is there anything particular I should do or just uninstall through the control panel?

Jim

[Lazlo]

If it ain't broke....

No seriously, I wouldn't. I would consider backing up data then resinstalling to a reformatted hard-drive though.

[EdHornby]

Hmmm, I dunno - I'm in the 'it ain't broke...' camp - deleting MS system files is asking for trouble

Lazlo's idea is good - only issue is that you will have gone through the MS product activation (which is the biggest pain in the arse IMO) so if you put it on a new hard drive then they'll think it's a hack even though we all know it's not.... grrr b@st@rd Microsoft

and you'll need to spend hours installing all the update as well

stuff that - go down the pub and buy beer to forget about it

[kuki9591]

if they are the ME installation cab files, they should be safe to delete, ME and XP are very very different products and I cannot see how XP would need any of the previous installation files.

Mike

[whirlpool]

If you found all the files in a folder seperate from your windows XP folder, rename the folder.

If nothing's broke after a couple of reboots, you're safe to delete them. If you do get a problem when you reboot, you can use DOS or safe mode to rename the folder back.

Cheers,
Matt.

[yellowduke]

Deleted them and nothing bad happened!

[Owenter]

Yet!