What are the $NTUninstall folders?

$NTUninstall is a folder that appears everytime you download on of Windows XP updates. For example, if you download KB924667, a $NtUninstallKB917953$ will appear in your WINDOWS directory.

These folders contains the information on how to remove the update, the same information used by “Add/Remove program” utility.

How to safely delete the $NTUninstall folders?

As i said before, these folders containing the uninstall information of windows updates, to delete them means that you can no longer roll back those updates. Nevertheles, these folders tend to take up space. So if you’re running out of disk space, you might consider deleting that data.

To find out the nature of the update in question, simply check Microsoft website, by copy/paste the id into the following link

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=(paste id here)

Ex: $NtUninstallKB917953$ > http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=917953

Now that you know what the update does, you can make your decision on whether you might uninstall it in the future or not. I recommend waiting a couple weeks after installation before making your decision. After that period, if you feel that your system is stable, odds are that you wont need to unistall the update anymore, you are good to go.

I recommend making a backup of everything before deleting.

Now, that you delete the folder, you might want to remove the entry from Add/Remove Programs.

To do that, launch the application and then attempt to uninstall the update.Add or Remove Programs will realize that the backup files already been delete and will automaticly remove the listing.