Compressed old Files, where are they?

[F_Porsche]

Hi, everyone...

When I use Disk Cleanup on windows xp, I never bother to check the compress old files box, because they might be important, but it's really starting to get my attention because the "old files" are over a gigabyte in size. My question is where are the old files and how can I delete them?

[Play_The_0dds]

being this is something that would take alot of typing to explain, i found a link with pretty much everything you are asking.read down the page past the zip folders stuff...
http://www.pcuser.com.au/pcuser/hs2....256E9700296ED5

[F_Porsche]

Thanks for the link, Play_the_odds. I have searched my hard drive for files I don't need, turns out that the "old files" are my pictures and the programs that I downloaded from the net (duh)! Why didn't I notice that before? Looks I shouldn't remove them after all.