Clearing space on C: drive on Windows 7

It's been a REALLY long time since I've blogged anything.

Anyhow, I've been with my current company for almost five years and have been using the same notebook running on Windows 7 for all these years.

Yes, they have given me a new notebook after 3 years, but I've stuck with the current one for reasons which shall not be covered in this article. :P

Basically, I ran out of space on my C: drive. I had only 10.5GB left out of 108GB.

Here's how a quick and dirty note on how to clear space besides using "Disk Cleanup".

DISCLAIMER:
Make sure you have a Systems Image backup in case you FUBAR your machine.
This "note" here is meant for my own future reference.
If you destroy, break, damage, get yourself into hot soup in office because of this, it's your decision and choice. I cannot be held responsible for your choice of actions.

Now that that's been said...

1. Run "PatchCleaner" and MOVE the orphaned/old patch folders to another location. This program can be gotten from "http://download.cnet.com/PatchCleaner/3000-18512_4-76399133.html" - this effectively managed to clear about 11GB of space.

2. Move your Windows Search Index off to another drive. How to do that?
- Open a administrative command prompt
- Run this command line "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL srchadmin.dll"
- Click on "Advanced", on next screen, click on "Select New" and choose the folder you want to move the index files to.
- Click "OK" and wait.

Once control returns to the application, you will have more free space on your C: drive. I got back another 11.5GB of space on my C: drive.

Hope the above steps helps. And as usual, YMMV.