SP/3 Cleanup

What files and folders can we delete after SP/3 is installed?

In the past for SP/2 we deleted stuff after SP/2 was installed and wondered if anyone knew if SP/3 has same that can be deleted.

This is what I got from Alex Nichol on SP/2 and looking for some of same for SP/3:
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Tidying Up After Installing SP2
by Alex Nichol

Installing SP2 leaves a lot of space on your hard disk taken up by files you would only ever need if you were to uninstall SP2. Once you are sure you are happy with the upgrade, do the following:
A very big System Restore point will have been made. Once a new regular size one has been made in the ordinary way, clean up by going to Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup and, under 'More Options,' click the bottom button to remove all but the most recent restore point.
Delete the hidden folder of files that would be restored by an uninstall: C:\Windows\$NTServicePackUninstall. Once this is done, if you try to use the 'Remove' for Service Pack 2 in Add/Remove Programs, that will fail and will offer to delete the entry. See below on how you can remove this entry too. This was 293 MB.
There may also be a large folder C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download, depending on how you did the installation. That can be deleted also. This will be around 266 MB if you downloaded this SP/2 update.
Check that the installation's temporary folder got properly removed. It will be on the drive where you downloaded the setup files (probably C:) and will have a long name of random letters. If it is still around, delete it. And burn the downloaded file to a CD so as to have it if you ever need to reinstall.
There will also be a large folder C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles. Do not delete this - it will be used in future by Windows File Protection - but on an NTFS disk you can compress it to save about 200MB of disk space. Right-click on it, select Properties, click the Advanced button, and select Compress. Without compressing the total size of the files is about 407 MB.

Or, you could delete it if you know you will never want to use the Windows File Protection which is like using scanreg or something like that. If we get that messed up we might as well do a restore or a clean install. I also saw several messages in newsgroups that say to go ahead and delete this folder too cause it is so big and saves a lot of space.

Also you can delete other Windows Updates Files to gain space. Go to C:\WINDOWS and delete the files that are in blue. They all start with a $ sign and are in blue. These are windows updates you got and installed. They are also in Add/Remove Programs.

The thing is if you delete these, you won't be able to uninstall the update from Add/Remove Programs. So be sure your computer is running good with the updates before deleting the uninstall for them.

You can remove those entries in Add/Remove Programs. This for removing the Windows Updates from there. But you can also remove the SP/2 entry there too. It is named Windows XP Service Pack.

You will see the corresponding Uninstall entries in Add/Remove Programs list. To manually remove the hotfix entries from Add/Remove Programs, try this:

Click Start, Run and type REGEDIT.EXE
Navigate to the the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall
Backup the branch by exporting to a REG file.
Select the corresponding sub-key (Hotfix ID) and delete the key.
Close Registry Editor.


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