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Windows Forum / Windows Me / System Tools / September 2004

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Cabinet Files

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Mike - 27 Sep 2004 16:45 GMT
I have a huge amount of disk space (6 GB) being taken up
by cabinet files (*.cab) being taken up in the folder:

C:\_RESTORE\ARCHIVE

How can I delete these to free up the space?  Also, can
you stop them from being created?

Thanks.
Mike M - 27 Sep 2004 17:19 GMT
> 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.
 
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