I would like to install XP SP3, but only have about 800MB left on the disk partition, and the instructions say I need 1.5GB. I see two places where I could free up a LOT of space, but don't know how to safely do it: 1) There are tons and tons of Windows update files.. if SP3 is going to duplicate them, can I safely erase them all? Do I need to keep some of them in order to load SP3? 2) My WMP keeps my CD library on C:. Is there any way to move all those files over to another disk partition? I'm hoping that there is some sort of configuration setting somewhere that says where to find music files. My apologies if this has been answered before, but the search returns at least 90,000 hits. Thanks!

You have bigger problems other than how to install SP3. How big is your HDD & how is it partitioned? Why is the disk space so low on the primary partition? Where is your swap file located? "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Here is info on removing the unnecessary update files: http://blog.ryantadams.com/2008/02/... As for windows media player. Each versions is a little different, but you should be able to find a "Options" window. Once you open options, there is a tab for "rip music". Click that tab and you can change the location CDs get ripped to. Then just cut and paste your whole music library from the old location to the new location. Next time you open WMP, you'll need to let it re find all your files. You can do this by pressing "F3" to open the "add to library..." window. -Ryan Adams http://RyanTAdams.com

Check the WMP options. I think you will find an option that says where to store your files. You can also move your My Documents folder, which is probably huge. Tweakui will do that. Look in the My Computer > Special Folders section. Tweakui is a free download. You can preserve more space by installing new programs on a second drive/partition.

If you hardly have any free space left, then why not buy a new/larger hard drive. Set it up as a slave drive, and then get a "mirror image" type program, like casperXP, or Norton Ghost. Then make a mirror image onto the new drive. Once that is done, change the new drive so that it is the Master drive, and you can now boot off of the new drive. All you programs will still be recognized by your XP operating system. Problems solved.

Quickest least expensive way is get a 2gb or larger flash drive and move some data to it temporarily to free space. Then after you do sp3 transfer back what you can and follow the advice others have given.

Thanks for all the responses. I have a 16GB partition to hold Windows and Windows programs, but it's gotten filled up over time. I was hoping to avoid moving partitions around (never risk free) and increasing the partition size (will wait until the next full backup). The WMP CD collection seemed like an easy target. It took a while to move all 1.8GB of data... I couldn't believe how many albums were still listed as "Unknown Artist/Unknown Album". Eventually I got it all cleaned up and moved over and reconfigured, and it still works. As for the swap file, I guess it's on the C: partition, since I never explicitly moved it anywhere else. Does anyone have suggestions about moving it to another partition? I have 1GB of RAM, so it's not tiny. Windows will grow the swap file if it feels the need to, won't it? I don't suppose it could share the same partition as the Linux swap space? I now have something like 2.6GB free (even without cleaning up the old update files), but the more I read up on SP3, the more worried I get about how it supposedly breaks a lot of stuff. Eventually I'll have to go to SP3 in order to get further updates, but for now I'm wondering if it's best to hold off and read up some more on it. Suggestions?