Uninstalling Older J2SE Updates and other Java installs

Question

The add/remove programs in XP shows the following:
J2SE Development Kit 5.0 Update 4.0 280 MB
J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 2 117 MB
J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 4 118 MB
J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 6 119 MB
Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_03 107 MB
I could use more hard drive space and want to remove some unnecessary installations. This has probably been asked before many times, but I could not find an answer and would appreciate it if someone could direct me to an article or documentation explaining if all these are necessary.
Thank you,
Rich

Answer 1

They are all independent and you only need to keep whichever one(s) you want.
The J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0. . . and Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_03 107 MB allow you to run Java program developed by others.
The J2SE Development Kit 5.0 Update 4.0 280 MB allows you to create Java programs. It needs the corresponding Runtime version.
To minimize possible problems, I recommend that you uninstall in reverse order of install, then reinstall what is wanted.
The current Java version is 5.0 update 6.