Cleaning up... Safe to delete Empty Folders?

[K G G]

I am doing a bit of cleanup and maintenance on my W2K system... besides the standard cleanup tools (IE etc), I have found a number of empty folders in the WINNT and SYSTEM32 area.

I am showing all files/folders and do not hide system files, so if a folder is empty it should be safe to delete? yes/no/maybe?

I also followed some of the advice in this thread:
http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/i...showtopic=1103
where it applied to W2K as well.

Overall I intend to achieve more space, faster defrag, faster backup etc.

Anything else anyone would recommend to clean up?

Thanks and Cheers
KGG

[lgbpop]

Download and unzip the file linked below, and follow the directions in the readme.txt file; then run msconfig and tidy up your Startup and Services if necessary.

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/att...9&d=1176349392

[Welshjim]

K G G--

Safe to delete Empty Folders?

Unless they are Operating System folders, sure. (Even when they are OS folders probably OK, unless you eventually do something that expects them.)
But empty folders take up only a few Kb. Deleting them may not help much in freeing space and speeding the PC.
P.S. That is an interesting website (bold-fortune.com) you posted. Thanks.

[Tuttle]

I am doing a bit of cleanup and maintenance on my W2K system... besides the standard cleanup tools (IE etc), I have found a number of empty folders in the WINNT and SYSTEM32 area.

I am showing all files/folders and do not hide system files, so if a folder is empty it should be safe to delete? yes/no/maybe?

Even configured like that, Windows Explorer will still hide a handful of things. I can't think of any directory that would appear to be empty as a result, but I'd still be tempted to leave things alone -- not enough benefit to make it worth the risk.

[K G G]

Thanks lgpbob - now I got MSConfig for W2K.

Hi Jim - The empty folders just clutter and it is easier for me to see changes before/after playing around. Bold-Fortune has not a lot of activity but shows promising threads - just found it today as well.

Hey Tuttle - what would Explorer still hide and more importantly, how can one truly see all HD contents then?

[Tuttle]

"dir /a" in a command prompt still works, as would any GUI file management tool that does its own work instead of just containing an Explorer window.

desktop.ini files are one thing that stays hidden (the little files that give certain folders a custom icon, or special behaviour like the Fonts folder), and IIRC part of the IE store might be treated the same. They changed the behaviour in Windows Vista to show everything, and instead of people wondering what was missing there were people wondering how to make the desktop.ini files disappear.

[K G G]

Gotcha - Thanks (forgot all about the old DOS commands...)

[Train]

Those Dos type commands still work , well a lot of them anyway, in Vista.

[SpywareDr]

Neither Windows Explorer or the DIR command can be used to accurately report how disk space is being used on a NTFS volume. (Results from a "dir /a" command can even vary depending on Windows Explorer settings).

Some of the reasons why used/unused disk space reports for a NTFS volume may appear imprecise are:

• Cluster size
• File attributes or NTFS permissions
• Path exceeds 255 characters
• Invalid folder|file names
• NTFS metafiles
• Alternate Data Streams
• File system corruption
• Other NTFS features (hard links, reparse points, junctions)

More detail here:

How to locate and correct disk space problems on NTFS volumes
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303079

[K G G]

Very interesting indeed Doc. Thanks for the link.

[SpywareDr]

No problem.