My first pc, boy do I have probs, help? (1 Viewer)

[Michael Allred]

Ok guys, I'm hoping somebody can help me out here.

I just got a computer from a friend. I had another friend wipe it clean and install Windows XP. He streamlined it for me so I have just the programs I want, no extra fluff.

When he got it back to me, I had about 800 MBs of disc space on it.

In the span of a week, I've got about ZERO! The ONLY program I added myself was Java and that doesn't take up 800 MBs!

I've looked through my computer for unnecessary files, jpeg, mpeg, avi, etc. Nothing. I CANNOT find anything that is taking up so much space and I keep getting warnings about low disc space. I can't even burn my own CDs so I even removed Nero (for burning CDs) and at one point I got about 100 MBs of space back. In a day or 2 I was again down to near zero.

I remove temporary internet files, and whatever useless stuff I CAN find but nothing seems to help. Something keeps eating up disc space but I just don't know what to do to find it. Everything else I have on here is stuff I need like AOL, ad-aware but it's pretty sparse as is and like I said, I had 800 MBs when I got it back.

I am so NOT a computer expert and am completely confused as to what to do. Even my friend who set it up for me doesn't know what's up.

Can anybody help?

 

[ThomasC]

Go to Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore -> System Restore Settings and disable it. System Restore may be backing up a lot of files. If that's not the problem, re-enable it.

 

[Al.Anderson]

800 MB isn't very much space. You should have your friend add a drive, say 80 Gigabytes; which should be cheap.

Also, besides the system restore (which was a good call by the way) it could be the virtual memory setting.
Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Virtual Memory. Choose custome size and make the max equal the min. This is usually set at 2.5 time the amount of physical memory you have. But can be set as low as equal to your memory; especially while you wait to get a new drive. (Also, it can be set lower if you don't use many memory hogging programs, or if you don't run multiple programs at the same time.)

 

[Seth--L]

How big is the HD? Like Anderson says, just buy a new HD.

 

[Donovan]

I'd guess it was your temp internet files. IE stores a lot of images from websites you visit locally to speed up browsing. Go into Tools-> Options and reduce the size of your temp internet files. Try it out and see if thats the culprit.

 

[Mike Fassler]

sounds like to me that you just have an uber small hardrive, get another HDD and set it up as slave. change yer virtual memory settings too.

 

[Dan Mc]

I found this neat little program: Crap Cleaner
It's free and cleans up lots temp files that you don't need. Freed about 500 mb for me.

You can also try these tweaks to optimize XP so that it isn't such a hog on your resources, these are tweaks for video editing, but most are good for just speeding things up:
WinXP Tweaks

 

[Max Leung]

Only 800 megs left when you got it back? Good heavens! Get yourself a cheap 40 or 60 or 80 gb hard drive. You could probably get one for $50 US or so. There comes a point when your time is worth more to you than trying to clean up a system that has such little space in the first place.

I'm betting that the swap file ate the remaining space.

 

[Michael Allred]

Ok, I found out what the problem was. Windows did an automatic update and that update took up all the space. I deleted it and reset it so that it won't automatically update from now on, I will have to allow it.

 

[Will_B]

Might it be that your computer has one hard drive which is divided into a C drive and a D drive, and you've simply filled up the C drive because you didn't notice you had a D drive for your own documents?

You have to understand that we are shocked because you're saying that your hard drive when you got it had only a bit more room on it than a CD-R! That simply doesn't make any sense. If it is a very old laptop, then maybe... but it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Where is the friend who streamlined it for you, can't he tell you?