Computer problem

[deadminnowcatcher]

I have a computer that is running slow and disk defragmenter says that there is only 1% free space. I have cleaned out the temp internet files and run ad aware. the kids had 2000 songs on the computer. I deleated them and only freed up 1% more. i dont have much on the computer that i know of. A few pictures and games but not alot. there is obviously something taking up alot of space that I am not aware of. I have went in to the add/ deleat programs and deleated a few unused things but is has not freed op much. Any advice?

[Orlip]

Have you emptied the recycle bin? When you delete files they go to the recycle bin and will still take up space. After that do a restart, Alot of times when you delete programs a restart will finish the delete process.

[deadminnowcatcher]

i have been doing both as i go along. not freeing up much space

[upnorth]

Go into windows explorer and right click on the folder and go to properties to see what the size of the folder is. When you find the one that is really larger double click and start checking the folder in there. In some cases your anti virus software may not be deleting or over writing the old virus definitions.

What is the function that you use this this PC for? If you are using it mobile and are using any kind of synchronizing the synchronizing may be failing and filing up the hard drive.

Also be sure you empty your recyle bin and the run the defrag to sort everything out.

[eurolarva]

do a search on the internet for a program called dump cleaner. It is free. download it and run it. First time I ran it it deleted 1.3 gigs of garbage that I did not know I was carrying. Tried it on four machines at work with the same results. Crappy download programs will place zipped files in a temp file and then leave them there after the file has been unzipped.

[Whoaru99]

If you have enough free space on your hard drive (only need about 1MB), download a program called "TreeSize Free".

It will show you what is taking up the space on your drive. MUCH easier than going through each folder.

[Please read forum policy before posting again, Thank You]

Here's a screen shot of one of my drives. You can see how easy it is to see the folder sizes. Just click on the little + signs to break it down even more.

The only thing that was confusing at first was that the very top bar shows how much total space is used, not the size of the drive. The total drive size is listed way down at the bottom of the screen.

[Orlip]

Quote:

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Go into windows explorer and right click on the folder and go to properties to see what the size of the folder is. When you find the one that is really larger double click and start checking the folder in there. In some cases your anti virus software may not be deleting or over writing the old virus definitions.

What is the function that you use this this PC for? If you are using it mobile and are using any kind of synchronizing the synchronizing may be failing and filing up the hard drive.

Also be sure you empty your recycle bin and the run the defrag to sort everything out.

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Does he have anti-virus? and if so did he keep it up to date? My parents dropped of their laptop for me to look at with the same problems. Short version 115 virus's, they swore they did not open any files in emails and so forth but the only thing I could do was a complete format and reinstall.

[broman]

Delete your internet cache, most caches are set really high and take up a lot of disk space. If you have high speed I would suggest setting the amount of disk space used by the cache to 1%.

Also, do a find for files that are larger than 10mb (100000 bytes). You might find a runaway log or other such file that can be deleted.

[pathogen]

Delete email that you don't need from ALL folders, then compact them all. Sometimes this can free up a surprising amount of space.