The hard disk space requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 2

This article describes the hard disk space that is required when you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on a computer that is already running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition or that is already running Microsoft Windows XP Professional.

The following table lists the hard disk space requirements for Windows XP SP2.In this table, the "Working space" entry is the hard disk space that is required for files that are used only during the installation process. The working space requirement is temporary and does not contribute to the total hard disk space requirement.

In this table, the "Files that remove Windows XP SP2" entry is the hard disk space that is used for storing the files and the settings that are changed during the installation of the service pack. You can automatically back up the files during the installation of the service pack. These files are required if you want to remove the service pack later.

You must also have 30 MB of free hard disk space on the first primary system partition. The first primary system partition is the disk volume that contains the hardware-specific files that are required to start Windows. For example, the primary system partition contains the Ntldr file, the Boot.ini file, and the Ntdetect.com file.

For additional information about the hard disk space requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 1, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For additional information about the system requirements for Windows XP operating systems, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: