Eureka, yes yes yes this did it.
Fist I wish to thank you all very much for you kind assistance.
Yes 36GB might not be so much in today?s environments in the computer world.
I run a P$ 3Ghz chip and the raptor at 10.000 revs keeps my computer fairly fast win EIN XP and SP3.
I fanatical about utilities and keep my computer in top trim at all time so it serves me good for what I do.
This is what I have done now:
Checdisk gave all clear and no errors.
Created new restore point, deleted all but latest and run disc cleaner.
Run Ccleaner in advanced category ?wipe free space? this took away 19Mb only.
I also noticed that Ccleaner did not delete $NtServicePackUninstall$ but all hotfixes, which it say it will do and saw that the service pack folder was 460Mb, so I also deleted this. As I am soon due anyway to reinstall WIN EXP and have never had to go back or use this. So I took this risk.
Now my HDD uses only 23.1Gb and has 7.1Gb free which will last me a long time until I upgrade to a modern computer in a years time.
This is the first ever in 15 years I have used a forum for help and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised how quick and friendly people are. My sincere congratulations and thanks to you all.
Kind regards
Tony, the old Swedish Viking.
PS. Here is some help for those who may not know about the uninstall of the service packs to generate more space:
Locate the Service Pack Uninstall folder in the %Systemroot%\$NtServicePackUninstall$ folder.
Select the $NtServicePackUninstall$ folder and delete it.
To remove the Service Pack uninstall option from the Add/Remove Programs menu, delete the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Windows 2000 Service Pack x
where x is the version number of the Service Pack that is installed