I have a small 4 gig hard drive. I am running Win2k. It's fat. Since I do lots of graphic work the programs I use are large as well. What I need to know is if there is anyway to thin Win2k. are there files that I can safely remove. Do I need me Cab files? Any sugestions?

as far as i know you can delete dllcache and driver cache. This should give you 350 MB.
You can compress the inf folder.
Keep your original w2k CD at hand!

I have a few suggestions:
1) If you have installed any service packs you may be storing uninstall information that could take up 100MB or so. You can safely delete this in the WINNT(or is it system32, my memory is foggy) directory under something like %ServicePackUninstall%(It will look very similar to this, again very foggy this morning).

2) You can uninstall several Windows components from the "Add/Remove Windows Components" screen. By default windows does not allow you to uninstall everything, there are some hidden. Go to %systemroot%\inf\ and open sysoc.inf. Delete all HIDE mentions but leave the commas on either sideof it so that "bla,hide,bla" become bla,,bla or whatever the blas are. Then go back to add/remove windows components while logged in as an administrator and remove unwanted junk.

3) By default, windows will create a huge swapfile equal to about 1.5*your system ram. If you have lots of ram, say 256mb or more then you can probably safely decrease this value, but I wiouldn't set it to a value below your system ram. Right Click MyComputer-> Properties-> Advanced-> Performance Options-> Virtual Memory-> Change -> And change the initial size to whatever you prefer. Also a good recommendation to set the maximum to the initial size so that the swapfile size does not change all the time. If you run several large apps though leave the max size alone.

4) Make sure you run diskcleanup regularly to elliminate temp files, internet cache, etc.

5) About the CAB files you mention, if these are the install cab files like those in the i386 win2k install CD then you are safe to delete them, if you ever need them again just pop in the CD and redirect the programs search to this disk. Highly unlikely you will ever need them again though.

Thats all I can think of right now. This should give you a sizable chunk of your diskspace back. Be sure to use a good 3rd party defrag software(Perfect Disk, Norton Speeddisk, etc) after all this to tidy up your disk a bit.

Easiest way? Just break down and spend $80 and get another hard drive (probably get you a good 20 Gigs)....

If you're cheap, contact computer repair stores in your area about any old, small drives they may have that you can buy for a couple of songs.....

NTFS 4/5 File Compression in NT & Win2k allow a very NEAT trick you guys might not be aware of presently or use!

(It's good for both space of data storage & exe loading speed benefits at the same time because of file by file compression ability!)

(Been doing this for a long time now, I don't have the "Elephant Sized" 20+ gb disks many folks have is why... it works well, read on!)

THIS IS HOW I USE IT:

I compress using File by File, Directory by Directory compression on my system first!

This is done in Explorer via right click properties of a drive... I do the WHOLE DRIVE first!

Then, I later go to the FIND part of Explorer and find ALL executeable types... and I mean ALL (the ones I know of at least!) and uncompress them!

Works out NICE, because all the data files on my machine are compressed back!

(For less space use, I need the space with 5gb drives)

Exe's of all types are NOT compressed & load at FAST speed not having to travel thru the decompression layer of NTFS 4-5 upon reads to startup! Some folks say that compressing an exe file is faster because it is smaller to read in, but that means travelling thru the decompression driver layer in the filesystem... to me, that means overhead in load!

(Sure, faster CPU's of today now aid this decompression process & so do the faster drives, but that is STILL overhead... so I go with this route, no overheads at all, absolutely top speed loadups!)

An exe reads its body into RAM to loadup, and adding the complexity & overhead of decompression PLUS that added step of it slows that down!

To Wit, here is the 'generic' file open & run process of any file:

File Open
File Read/Write
File Close

(By not adding in another step of File Decompress first, you save time!)

* Remember: This is NOT DoubleSpace/DriveSpace weak either...

(NTFS itself as a filesystem is ALOT more reliable & does it file by file & directory/folder by directory/folder too! Very nice...)

Plus, NTFS is GREAT on recovery if your emergency disks are stable & working also
(always make 2-3 of them, as floppies DO get nutty & corrupt for various reasons over
time!)

Here is the exe-type list I use that remain UNCOMPRESSED on my drives for your
reference (feel free to add to it if you know any others as well!):

==========================================
.exe
.dll
.sys
.drv
.vxd
.ocx
.vbx
.acm
.386
.com
.adt
.vbs (not really exe, but...)
.ax
.bat (not really exe but...)
.bin
.btm
.cla
.cpl
.csc
.csh
.hlp
.chm
.scr
==========================================

* Gets you the best of Drive Space & speed possible that I am aware of... the best of both worlds!

I have window 2000, I made a mistake and installed a VGA adapter. It altered all of my graphic settings. I want to know how to reinstall my original adapter that windows 2000 came with, can you help me out. Or can you point me in the right direction?

to reggie

try uninstalling all vga adapters then windows 2000 plug and play would detect a new device and install the correct drivers.