The best opportunity for reducing the size of your Windows 2000 installation footprint is during installation. By using an unattended installation, you can set the answer file to avoid installing unnecessary programmes and services. After the installation you can save further space by deleting the driver cab file which is stored in the winnt/driver cache/i386 directory, this is the folder that allows drivers to be automatically installed. Note that if you do this, you will be prompted for your Windows 2000 CDRom if any additional drivers need to be installed.

The Windows File Protection System also keeps copies of all the system files in the winnt/system32/dllcache folder, the size of this folder can be greatly reduced by using a smaller default cache size, or disabling this feature altogether.