Jeremy

[ferreter38]

Running Disk Cleanup (it's in the start menu) on the C: drive should remove any unneeded windows update install files, etc. If you've never run it before and have had it a while, that may get you a surprising amount of space back, especially if there's loads of stuff sat in the temp dir and recycle bin.

If by partitioned, you mean that some of the space on your drive is unallocated, you can put it into a secondary partition via disk management (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management) although you don't want to mess with that if you don't understand what you're changing because it'll render the contents of the drive unrecoverable if you do the wrong thing.

Partitioned into "C" about 60Gb and the rest allocated to "D"... It's a damn nuisance - my expansion drive is 1/2 a Terrabyte and I use folders on that. I ran Cleanup and gained about 800Mb. Also browsed through my programs and uninstalled a couple that I no longer used. I then checked My Music - I'd forgotten I'd got stuff in their and transferred 2.5Gb to my D and F drives. I've now got 3.28Gb free on C...

Can I safely uninstall "Windows Live Messenger" it's a flaming nuisance - damn thing keeps popping up when I reboot, I don't use it and have absolutely no intention of using it!!!

BTW I didn't mention that the original OS on my laptop was that awful "Vista" until I overwrote with the Win 7 upgrade.

It would appear that the MS team have dropped another clog with their Win 8. I don't know how they manage to make such a cock-up. Windows NT was rubbish, XP was fine, and then there was the awful Vista followed by Win 7 which is great and then they produce Win 8. So looking at that every other so called upgrade of the MS OS is the pits:(

Thinking back to earlier PCs we thought we were at the cutting edge when we had a 40Mb hard drive installed That wouldn't even run the latest operating systems. Going back even further there was the ZX Speccy with 16k of RAM - I later upgraded it to 32k and thought that was fantastic... I even had a microdrive... still got the old Speccy kicking around plus a couple or three Amigas

[JeremyR]

Partitioned into "C" about 60Gb and the rest allocated to "D"... It's a damn nuisance - my expansion drive is 1/2 a Terrabyte and I use folders on that. I ran Cleanup and gained about 800Mb. Also browsed through my programs and uninstalled a couple that I no longer used. I then checked My Music - I'd forgotten I'd got stuff in their and transferred 2.5Gb to my D and F drives. I've now got 3.28Gb free on C...

Having the drive split like that is actually a Really Good Idea. Keep programs and Windows stuff on one, and files and documents on the other. That way if Windows goes kaboom, you don't lose the documents on D or have to faff about getting them off before you wipe C.

Can I safely uninstall "Windows Live Messenger" it's a flaming nuisance - damn thing keeps popping up when I reboot, I don't use it and have absolutely no intention of using it!!!

Yep. Even if you don't, Microsoft are shutting down WLM next year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20222998

It would appear that the MS team have dropped another clog with their Win 8. I don't know how they manage to make such a cock-up. Windows NT was rubbish, XP was fine, and then there was the awful Vista followed by Win 7 which is great and then they produce Win 8. So looking at that every other so called upgrade of the MS OS is the pits:(

There's a fairly well established pattern with Windows: "Buy a version, skip a version." Think back literally decades:

Windows 3 : Pants
Windows 3.1: Much better
Windows 95: Groundbreaking but unstable as all hell
Windows 98: Much better.
Windows ME: Good god no, just don't remind me.
Windows XP: Solid as a rock (once it got SP2) and people still use it today.
Windows Vista: Commercial disaster and poorly received.
Windows 7: Just like Vista except without the problems.
Windows 8: Confusing as a bowl of chocolate spaghetti.

still got the old Speccy kicking around plus a couple or three Amigas

Makes me nostalgic for my Amiga 500+

[ferreter38]

I've still got XP on my desktop, I must get the PSU replaced.

One thing I have noticed is that all the vets I use and my Doctor still use XP. As you say it's stable and basically that's what you require.

[Team SLuG]

Yes, but sometimes they are locked into IE7, and other browsers are forbidden, which can be quite a pain when some essential web apps demand an A grade browser!