> How can I delete these to free up the space?
By learning how to use System Restore. Searching on System Restore" in
Win Me's Help & Support is a good place to start.
> Also, can
> you stop them from being created?
I would not advise that you do this unless you know your computer
backwards since system restore is a great tool that can help you recover
from many problems you might encounter.
You can control the space allocated for use by the C:\_RESTORE folder as
follows:
Control Panel | System | Performance | File System | Hard Disk and adjust
the restore slider to your preferred setting. A figure of 200MB is
normally more than adequate for day to day use allowing perhaps a week of
checkpoints to be available although increasing this to perhaps 400MB for
a few days during periods of large installs such Microsoft Office is
advisable.
The _RESTORE folders shouldn't occupy more than 12% of your C: drive or
400MB if the drive is <4GB. If more than that it would appear that System
Restore is not discarding (FIFOing) older data correctly, possibly because
at some time the system was not immediately rebooted following a state
change (switching SR either off or on).
So, my first suggestion is to reset System Restore:
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and check "Disable
System Restore", Apply and IMMEDIATELY reboot. This will flush you
restore folder and erase all checkpoints, then,
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and uncheck "Disable
System Restore", Apply and again IMMEDIATELY reboot. This should now
automatically create a new checkpoint immediately following the restart.
Finally adjust the space allocated to the restore folder as explained
earlier.
If this doesn't clear down the _restore archive (and it doesn't always
when users have experienced similar problems) the next suggestion is to
boot to DOS using a floppy and delete the entire _RESTORE folder structure
from there:
a) Boot to DOS using a floppy. Do NOT choose "Minimal Boot" from the menu
when booting from a floppy but rather choose "Start computer with (or
without) CD-ROM support" otherwise the ATTRIB command will not be
available.
b) At the DOS A:\> prompt, type:
ATTRIB -H -S -R C:\_RESTORE
REN C:\_RESTORE OLDREST
c) Remove the floppy
d) Reboot your PC
e) Delete the folder C:\OLDREST
f) Check that an automatic system restore checkpoint was created.
g) Finally adjust the space allocated to the restore folder:
Finally you may want to give system restore the once over by carrying out
the following quick test.
a) Create a shortcut on your desktop to a file.
b) Create a manual checkpoint
c) Delete the shortcut
d) Restore you PC to the checkpoint you created.
Was the shortcut restored? Did you see any error messages?

Signature
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2004]
mcmaltby@hotmail.com
> I have a huge amount of disk space (6 GB) being taken up
> by cabinet files (*.cab) being taken up in the folder:
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> Thanks.