Need to free up hard drive

Hi all,
I just acquired (for free) a Lenovo 3000 V100 100GB HD running XP Pro SP3. No disks. Not exactly a fast-moving machine at this point. Replaced keyboard, upgraded ram from 512 to 2GB. Haven't yet changed/deleted accounts of former owners, in case I need to access in order to find/change something. Removed all passwords, though.
MyComputer shows 25 GB free space after deleting lots of programs I have no interest in, as well as the few documents, pictures & music left from former owners. Made sure hidden files and protected files were visible, just to be certain I wasn't overlooking something obvious. Running WinDirStat (on advice of another forum) reveals only 45GB accounted for with files/programs. So, even after allowing for the fact that the HD has only 88GB of usable space, I'm "missing" 18GB (88-25=63GB, 45GB of which is accounted for, thus 63-45=18GB "missing").
It has a MS Office Suite installed (for which I don't have disks and would prefer not to lose), but no other programs I can't live without or easily replace.
My Questions:
1) What is the 22GB "IBM PRELOAD" that's taking up 1/4 of the drive? Can I get rid of this? Obviously it doesn't include the OS, which shows up separately.
2) Does anyone have a clue why the other 18GB is completely unaccounted for? (No other partitions are findable).
3) I have the XP key and access to a disk. If it comes down to formatting and reinstalling Windows, what do I need to know about this machine and its drivers, etc., to have a successful reinstall?
Any other info you need, just ask.
Thanks,
DL

Here are some ideas for freeing up disk space......
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

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donp815 wrote:
what do I need to install second hard drive HP PAVILLION: p6633w?
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