When you boot the computer up and press F8 you will get a menu. One of the options that comes up is to boot in DOS mode. However I saw XP’s version DOS mode once and never want to have to go through that again!
whats so bad bout windows xp dos to older ones?
With older ones you get honest-to-goodness, pure console-based, full-screen DOS. With XP you get DOS running in a window. Don’t worry about it, it’s a macho hacker thing. 
To get rid of temp files goto Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. Run the app and it should remove all temp files.
To get into the hidden files all you have to do is goto your C:\ drive and up at the top should be the tools bar.
i dun mind the dos in a window, you can switch it to be full screen, also, i type in alot of commands, for example “run_notepad”
[QUOTE=ThePenguinCometh]
You can’t find scandisk? Idiot! It’s simple - Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management, Storage, right-click the Volume, Tools, Options, Check Now button, Select Options, Start. And you couldn’t figure that out for yourself? 
Dux Computer Digest and Independent Contractor Pay Stubs
[/QUOTE]
Actually it is not ScanDisk in XP it is Chk disk and to clean temp files you can also go to My computer , right click on your c drive , click on properties and near the botom right it says cleanup, click and check temp files.
i got another problem, in my programs partition i was installing ut2k4, it encounterd an error, so i deleated the 4gb of installation it left behind then, i look and its still bieng read in there (in used space on partition properties it shoes about 5gb used, now i looked in the partition and there was one big folder with only about 195mb data in, i have show hidden files ticked, so were has all this space gone, will it be restored when i restart windows?
Could be your system restore files for that partition. I noticed Xp has a restore folder on each partition.
use Crap Cleaner to get rid of all your temp files http://www.ccleaner.com/
heres what it cleans Speed up, optimize and clean your PC for free | CCleaner for PC
I hope CC cleaner is improved because I used it a couple of years ago on a Win98 system and it took TOO MUCH out.In other words it wouldn’t boot afterwards.