help needed!!!!

[Legionary_Pullo]

good evening guys,

i would like to report a weird problem wit my pc i have windows xp service pack 2 installed and the problem is that my c drive keeps getting full.

weirdness is that i checked it manually and found that the files constitute only 5.6gb of space but the computer shoes 9.6gb space occupied.

i reinstalled the version but this problem comes back after some time.

i was just hoping that if some of u really brainy and good guys would be able to help me out because even my computer engineer cant figure it out.

thanks a ton in advance

[Doono]

Have you counted hidden files into the total? Alot of the windows install files are hidden which would add a lot to the total used space.

[Gaius Baltar]

What are the specs on your hard drive? (brand, size, speed, etc.)

[Incinerate_IV]

weirdness is that i checked it manually and found that the files constitute only 5.6gb of space but the computer shoes 9.6gb space occupied.

You mean you found the size of all 3241 Windows installation files and all the files of the program you installed and added them together!?

Seriously though, the size of the folders Windows give you is only an estimate... a very bad estimate. I once had a folder with around 20 gigs of stuff in there and all Windows told me was "Larger than 236 MB..."

If it tells you only 2 GB is left, then only 2 GB is left, there is nothing wrong with your computer.

[sdjenkyn]

also might want to check the size of your page file.

[Erik]

Seriously though, the size of the folders Windows give you is only an estimate... a very bad estimate.

No it's not.
It's accurate down to the last byte.
Adding numbers is something computers are very good at.

I once had a folder with around 20 gigs of stuff in there and all Windows told me was "Larger than 236 MB..."

right-click on a folder.
select "properties".
Should give you a pop-up saying the exact number of bytes.

---

I suspect it's the swap file, because it can be 0 bytes one instance, and several GB the next.

[Legionary_Pullo]

i have a Pentium(r) 4 1.6 ghz cpu with 1.00 gb ram installed.

yes it is showing 5.6 gb including hidden files. the thing is that i don't install anything in c drive and it contains only system files plus a few misc. addons even the downloaded internet files is put in another drive by me.

as i said this problem goes away when i reinstall windows but even if i dont touch c drive after say 15 days it says c drive is full and this really bugs me because i cant keep on formatting again and again.

this problem never came before it has just recently come and my computer is virus free.

and sorry what is page file?
even the computer engineer tried to solve it but couldn't.

[sdjenkyn]

page file is xp's virtual memory usage on said drive....not a great explanation but typical it can take up to 2-4gigs of space depending on your setting. Also how big is your drive ? Have you reformatted before you reinstalled? If yes to the last one have you written zero's to your hard drive?

[Citizen]

yes, tell us the damn capacity of your drive!

[Citizen]

Could be the space used for XP restore points. BY default, this is set to a very large proportion of the drive, and the bigger the space it has, the more restore points it creates. even on large drives this can be some 15GB and that drains a lot of space!

Right click my computer > Properties > System Restore then click C: and then settings, see how much space it's set to be using then adjust accordingly

[Leonidas The Lion]

Try disfragmenting.

[Legionary_Pullo]

my c drive space is 10gb.
the page size is 1 gb
disk fragmentating takes ages to complete

any luck finding solutions?

[spartan_phalanx]

You might consider using diskeeper, they have a 30 day trial. It utilizes real-time defragmenting so your computer stays defragged. It also allows boot time defragging as well as frag shield for managing your page file.

[Doono]

my c drive space is 10gb.
the page size is 1 gb
disk fragmentating takes ages to complete

any luck finding solutions?

Wait you have a 10 gig HD and you wonder why you keep runnign out of space? Or is that how much you have left?

[sdjenkyn]

my c drive space is 10gb.
the page size is 1 gb
disk fragmentating takes ages to complete

any luck finding solutions?

How big is your entire hard drive? If its bigger why have only a 10gig partition? Could solve a lot of issues knowing this.

[Simetrical]

Try checking things out with SequoiaView. It's pretty neat for visualizing this stuff.

No it's not.
It's accurate down to the last byte.
Adding numbers is something computers are very good at.

It will come up with an estimate while it's counting, however, which is a minimum based on what it's looked at so far (sometimes phrased as "at least . . .", but while it's counting you'll just see a steadily-increasing number). It can take some time to count up everything for large directories.

[Citizen]

You might consider using diskeeper, they have a 30 day trial. It utilizes real-time defragmenting so your computer stays defragged. It also allows boot time defragging as well as frag shield for managing your page file.

If you read the first post, the problem is that his drive keeps getting full. Disk defragmenter just re-arranges files that have become scattered on the disk over time and puts them in a contiguous order. So defragmenting his drive isn't going to help him one bit.

I suspect it's the swap file, because it can be 0 bytes one instance, and several GB the next.

The swap file is rarely ever (if at all) 0 bytes, and not usually several gigibytes either. I have always closely monitored the performance and operation of my computers and even when I am multitasking with several apps and doing memory dependant tasks such as in Photoshop, I've only seen it go up to 1.75GB and my page file is set to 0 (or should be) 'cause I have 2GB of ram

[spartan_phalanx]

Legionary_Pullo,

Are you by chance running Norton's AV?