CF29, XP, Hard Drive is shrinking?

This is a XP question, and I haven't enough experience with it to know where to look. (I've just come off W2K).

I have a 20g hd, and after a warning about lack of drive space, I deleted a few things to free up a little space, as confirmed in properties for the hd.
Then I reboot, and I get the warning again, check the properties, and the space I had created had disappeared. I'm running anti virus software, so I don't think it's a virus.

I see that XP is really bloated, over 15g! Is there any freeware that will help me clean out a little corner of space until I can get a larger drive installed? It's really annoying, as I am not comfortable imaging this drive prior to an hard-drive upgrade until it's solved.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

 

Hi I would first try cleaning it up a little. I use a freeware program called ATF Cleaner that will clean a lot of basic stuff.

Also...right click on my computer and turn off system restore. Right click on the c: drive and click disc clean up... under advanced tab

Click clean all but the most recent restore points. Post back what disc space you have after this.

-Nick

 

Thanks Nick!

ATF did help, and I turned off restore. I now have 4.37MB of free space.
I don't know what else to trash. I have my virus software, opera, firefox,
two freeware video players, zonealarm, and just a few files. If I can't free anymore space, maybe someone can point me to the drive swap thread, and I'll get out my wallet & screwdriver.

 

Your XP install is taking up 15Gb? Are you measuring just the Windoze folder or everything on the drive? My XP folder is taking up 1.5Gb and I though that was excessive. Go to search and search all files (enter *.* in the search field) on your hdd. Once you get the search results sort them by file size. See what you have that is taking up so much room.

The largest file I have on my C drive is a DVD ISO file at 4.5Gb.

 

You can also create more space by removing windows update uninstall files.

Check out this utility Remove Hotfix Backup Files

 

now that you have turned off System Restore, you can go back and delete all but the last restore point. Each system is set up different, but you may have alot of old restore points that are taking up alot of space.

 

Also, remember that if you don't empty your Recycle Bin, all that space you "made" is still wasted holding those files in limbo...

mnem
*Pointing out the obvious since Nineteen Sixty-Something...*

 

Look up puriform, they have lots of great and free utilties.

Download and install (uncheck the Ask.com toolbar options)
Glary Utilties
CCLeaner
Malwarebytes

Also, look at my post here .

Follow my directions at your own risk, btw.

 

RevoUninstaller is a great uninstall tool, plus it has alot of other great features.

 

Hamlet jones,
Folder options -> View -> check "show hidden files"
then, in C:\ -> Documents and settings check the size of Application Data folder for each user, you may have a lot of useless old files from different programs such as a mail client (emails you think you have deleted), or your video players, or virus software. These files will have to be deleted from the softwares themselves. Dont mess up yourself in Application Data folders.

 

Just out of curiosity, why three web browsers (the native XP Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox)???

Firefox has a compressed size of 7.7MB and Opera a compressed size of 9.88MB, so their final installations must be taking up a considerable amount of drive space (especially if you did not delete their original setup files).

Add this to the "Lord Only Knows!" size of Internet Exploder and "There Goes The Neighborhood!" (in disk space, that is).

 

I think I found the problem. Zone ALarm was creating a log file that was getting out of hand:

ZoneAlarm TvDebug.log file (how to disable) - Tech Support Guy Forums

I followed the advice and just got my space back.

Thanks everyone for helping me figure this out!

Really great forum here, the best for ToughBooks!

 

Because some browsers are better for some things than others.