Hard drive space not showing up.

[stappa]

I have had this problem for a while now and I can't seem to figure out why it's happening. I have a laptop and am running out of HD space. I was down to about 100 mb's at one point and deleted a bunch of stuff to get me back to about 2.5 gigs on a 18 gig HD.

The deal is I should have more room than this based on the HD size and what I have on my computer.

I have Windows XP upgraded from ME. I would just do a fresh install but I don't have CD's for some of my programs and don't want to have to re-buy anything.

Someone pointed out a few weeks back that it might be Norton causing the problem (backing up deleted files or something), I removed Norton and it cleared up some room but not nearly enough.

I'm not super techie but I did go through my registry and a lot of stuff I removed with add/remove programs is still there. I then manually removed some items from the registry that cleared up some extra space but I'm not totally comfortable deleting stuff from the registry so I stopped after removing the very obvious items.

Is there any utility out there that can help me with this issue?

Or is there something else that could possibly be causing this?

 

[trailnut]

Could we have a little more information, please? What brand and model of laptop is it and what programs do you currently have on the computer? Have you ran the "Disk Cleanup" option in Windows XP and the "Defragment" utility lately? (Although I'm sure that wouldn't account for 16 gigs or so...hehehe) Thanks!

 

[stappa]

You may, I'll make a list tonight.

 

[Taz480]

While ur making ur list, just a thought or two. How much space is System Restore using? Mine is set to max- a lil over 3GB. Your max will prolly be different. Also, I am not as familiar with the upgrade versions of Windows as I am of OEM versions, but doesn't the Upgrade version back up some of the WinME files in case you wanna go back to WinME? Last, but not least , how long ago did you install the XP upgrade? Are you new to XP? I ask cuz XP uses way more disk space for the OS than WinME does, especially if it DID in fact back up some of the WinME files. I don't remember exactly, but I believe the last time I installed WinME it used roughly around 500MB give or take. A fresh install of XP will usually run upwards of 2GB for the OS even without backed up files.

 

[stappa]

Hi,

Thanks, I'll look into the winME backup files. Same with the System Restore. Not sure how to check those but I'll look around. I don't know if a fresh install is possible becuase I don't have all the CD's I'd need. I don't have the original ME disc any more, just the XP upgrade. And if I reinstalled the OS would I have to reinstall all my software? If so I'm missing some of that too. I could spend $30 and get a new full version of XP from my buddy at MS. Only if I don't lose my programs though.

The computer is a compaq presario 1200Z Windows XP SP2 upgraded from craphole ME

The HD is partitioned.

D: which is where the OS came installed originaly and I'm guessing the upgrade installed over that, which is 2.78 Gigs total. There is 1Gig left.

As for what's on my C: which is 15.8 total with a little over 2.5 Gigs left according to defrag or when I click on it in my computer.

I would estimate I have about 2 gigs of files, maybe upwards of 3.
looking at my add/remove programs list I have

275 MB Easy CD Creator
268 MB MS Office XP
128 MB Dreamweaver MX
119 MB J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Updater 6 ??????
118 MB J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Updater 5 ??????
98 MB MS SQL Server
83 MB Flash MX
72 MB Musicmatch Jukebox
63 MB Adobe Reader 7.0.5????? I don't think I need this. Is reader really that big?
46 MB SQL desktop engine
46 MB office xp components
42 MB fireworks MX

About 20 more things that range from 40 MB to about 1 MB

Everything adds up to about 1.7 Gigs.

Not everything lists it's size but if all the software is 2 gigs. That's not even 6 gigs (high estimate) on a 15.8 gig drive. I'm missing a lot of space. I have had XP installef for a while now. IIRC I had at least 10 Gigs free when I installed it. I recently remomved visual studio and some other bulky programs to free up space, when all was said and done it just didn't look right.

Strange I tell you.


edit***************

system restore was at 2 Gigs so I lowered it to 1.5 so that's a little more space

 

[montag451]

On some (??all??) laptops, the manufacturers put a hidden partition on the hdd to 'help' you to restore your laptop to the state it was purchased in.
Maybe, this is taking up a gig or 2.