Still on the prowl for missing disk space

The "Volume Shadow Copy Service" (VSS) has been a part of Windows since 2003 and can silently consume prodigious amounts of disk space. Here's how to keep this almost-invisible service from devouring the hard-drive capacity on your XP or Vista system.

That's the lead item in my column in the WindowsSecrets newsletter this week.

VSS is a little weird; while parts of it can truly be a godsend (and the article explains why), if unconfigured or poorly configured, it can be assigned infinite space--- it'll keep going until it eats your entire hard drive. My article, titled "Tame Windows' Volume Shadow Copy Service" helps you use the service without having it run amok.

The other items this week include:

• Tuning "Thunderbird," the popular open source email client
  
  
• A fix for Windows' broken installer utility
  
  
• And (ahem), a correction. I admit it: I messed up the answer in Feb. 19 column, "Why am I locked out of the Registry?" I referred to the Group Policy Editor (GPedit) as if it were available in all versions of Windows, but it's not. The utility is included only in non-Home versions. Here's why I messed up: As of this writing, there are 26 — yes, 26 — different versions of Windows in use: five of XP, nine of Server 2008, one of Home Server, and 11 of Vista. Many of the Group Policy settings can exist and be edited in all versions, but the little front-end GPedit applet is found only in some of those versions. But you know what? You don't need it! I straighten it all out in this issue, and show how you can still easily manage the Group Policy settings even in versions of Windows that don't have the little GPedit applet.

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