You've been neglecting your Windows housekeeping chores, haven't you? Your system folders are bloated with hundreds or even thousands of unnecessary files. This dead weight hinders performance by reducing the amount of drive space available for your virtual memory. In addition, you lose the ability to print if the drive doesn't have room for your printer's spool file, and you may have insufficient storage space to create a system restore point in Windows Me and XP (this feature needs oodles of free space to store its backups). Here are five things Windows users can do to eliminate clutter in their system folders and maximize the space available on their drives.

Kill off unneeded uninstall files in Windows 2000 and XP: A number of you have asked about deleting the various service packs stored in the Windows folder. As reader Robert King from East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, puts it, "In my Windows directory, there are 13 folders totaling 85MB with names like $NTUninstallQxxxxxx$. Then there is a folder named ServicePackFiles consuming 280MB of space. Can I delete these folders?" Don't delete the ServicePackFiles folder! And be cautious about deleting any files in the Windows folder. Also, have a recent system backup on hand before you proceed.

Installing updates and service packs from Microsoft creates subfolders in your Windows folder that store the necessary uninstall information in case the update becomes problematic. These are hidden folders; to see them, launch Explorer and choose Tools, Folder Options, View. Under the 'Hidden files and folders' folder icon in the list of Advanced settings, select Show hidden files and folders. Then click OK. Now open the Windows folder in Explorer (click Show the contents of this folder if necessary) to see the folders with the uninstall information; typically they're called "$NtServicePackUninstall$" or "$NTUninstallQxxxxxx$" (where xxxxxx is a six-digit number; see FIGURE 1).

Chances are you don't remember what purpose these updates served, but in many cases you can find out. Reader Gil Allen of Redford, Michigan, points to Microsoft's answer to the question of which system files are deletable. The Q number indexes an article in Microsoft's Knowledge Base that lets you (or a support pro) identify what the patch was intended to fix. To determine a specific patch's purpose, go to support.microsoft.com, enter q followed by the six-digit number in the 'Search the Knowledge Base' box (see FIGURE 2 ), and press <Enter> to find an article with the gory details (you may have to dig a bit if the search engine finds more than one article). If you know that you'll never uninstall a particular update, delete the update's folder.

Once you've deleted an uninstall folder, you can't uninstall the update, but the uninstall option stays in the Add/Remove Programs applet. To fix this, choose Start, Run, type control, and press <Enter>. Click or double-click Add or Remove Programs, and with the 'Change or Remove Programs' button highlighted on the left, select one of the update(s) you deleted and click the Remove or Change/Remove button next to it. When Windows fails to find the uninstall folder you removed, it will ask whether you want to remove the item from Add or Remove Programs' currently installed programs list. Click Yes, and repeat the steps as necessary for every uninstall folder you deleted.

Not every folder relating to service packs can be slated for the trash heap, however. For example, as noted above, the ServicePackFiles folder should not be deleted. It holds essential files for when you use Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs applet to install or take away Windows components. Also, it contains files Windows uses to restore any system files that were overwritten by naughty install programs or that are otherwise damaged.

Relocate your virtual memory: Among the largest system files in your Windows folder is the one that Windows uses for virtual memory--disk space that complements your system RAM to let Windows act as if your PC has more memory than it does. Fortunately, you can tell Windows to put this file (known variously as the swap file or the paging file) on another drive.

In Windows 98 and Me, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click Performance, Virtual Memory and check Let me specify my own virtual memory settings. In the 'Hard disk' drop-down list, select an alternative drive. Set the 'Minimum size' and 'Maximum size' to the same number. Click Yes to acknowledge the scary warning, select Close, and click Yes to restart your PC.

In Windows 2000 and XP, log in as the administrator. Right-click My Computer and select Properties. Click Advanced, and in the Performance box choose Performance Options (in Windows 2000) or Settings (in XP). In Windows XP, click Advanced. In Windows 2000 and XP, click Change and select the drive currently being used for virtual memory. Set its initial and maximum sizes to 0 in Windows 2000, or click No paging file in XP, and then click Set. Select the drive you want to use for virtual memory, make the initial and maximum size values equal, and click Set (see FIGURE 3 ). When you're done, click OK twice to close the dialog box and to acknowledge the restart message. Then click OK twice more to close the remaining dialog boxes. Finally, click Yes to restart your PC.

Relocate your print spool: Reader Ron Evanoff of Newmarket, Ontario, writes to ask about another space issue: "Because my C: drive is pretty full, I get an error when trying to print a photo to my printer. The error indicates that my system drive is out of space. I have plenty of space on my D: drive. Can I move the spool file to that partition?" The answer depends on which version of Windows you use.

When you print a document, the application first sends the data to your hard disk. (Click here for tips on customizing these settings.) By default, Windows creates the spool (temporary) file in the Windows\Spool\Printers folder. Windows 2000 and XP make it easy for you to choose another location for this file. Let current jobs finish, and when no print jobs are pending, select Start, Settings, Printers in Windows 2000 or Start, Printers and Faxes in Windows XP.

In Windows 2000 and XP, choose File, Server Properties, Advanced. In the 'Spool folder' box, type the path to the spool folder you prefer--for example, D:\Spool (see FIGURE 4). (Type the path to an existing folder; Windows won't create the folder for you.) Click OK and then Yes to acknowledge the prompt. This procedure affects all printers set up on your system.

To set a different spool folder for a specific printer in Windows 2000 and XP, you'll have to edit the Registry. First, back it up (see instructions); then choose Start, Run, type regedit, and press <Enter>. In the left pane, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers. In the Printers key (represented by a folder icon), select the key for your printer. In the right pane, double-click SpoolDirectory. (If you don't see this icon, right-click in the right pane, choose New, String Value, type SpoolDirectory, and press <Enter>.) In the 'Value data' field of the Edit String dialog box, type the path to your new spool folder. You must specify a folder (such as 'd:\spool'), not the root of a drive. Click OK and exit the Registry Editor. (If you specified a nonexistent folder, create it manually, as Windows won't do it for you.) Choose Start, Run, type services.msc, and press <Enter>. From the list of services that appears, select Print Spooler, then Action, Stop. When the spooler stops, choose Action, Start and exit Services.

To redirect the print spool (and other temporary files) to another drive in Windows 98 and Me, create a folder for these files on another drive. For example, you might create a folder on your D: drive named Temp. Then choose Start, Run, type notepad c:\autoexec.bat, and press <Enter>. If the file doesn't exist, Notepad will ask if you want to create a new one; click Yes. If the file contains lines that begin 'set temp=' or 'set tmp=', edit those lines with the new path to your temporary folder (for example, set temp=d:\temp). If your autoexec.bat file contains no such line, add anywhere in the file a line that reads set temp=d:\temp, where d:\temp stands for the actual path to your new temporary folder. Add another line that reads set tmp=d:\temp (again, replacing d:\temp with your path). Make sure that each of these commands is on a line by itself. Now save the file and restart your computer to see the change.

Relocate temporary browser files: Internet Explorer may store its cache files on your Windows drive. To move them, launch IE, choose Tools, Internet Options, and under the General tab, click Settings, Move Folder (see FIGURE 5). Select a folder on a drive with adequate free space, click OK twice, and then Yes to restart or log off and move the files to the new folder.

Clean up automatically: Applications don't always clean up the temporary files that they place on your computer. If you have Windows 2000, Me, or XP, you can automate the Disk Cleanup utility that comes with Windows. Go to "Superscrub Your Drive Automatically" for complete details; although that tip mentions only Windows Me and 2000, it applies to Windows XP as well. And visit the Step-by-Step column, "Reclaim Hard Drive Space," for more tips on freeing up disk space.