Massive Hard Drive Space Loss

[NiTeHaWk4787]

Hi, my gigabytes on my hard drive dropped from 28 GB available out of 31 GB, to 7.8 GB out of 31 GB. And I also notice that whenever I free up more space, after a day or two it drops right back down to 7. Theirs a folder called the recycler folder that says its holding 15,000 MB of games and music and garbage that I think may be the problem, but I cant find it anywhere. I know it exists because the 2003 Norton shows on a long list that its holding a bunch of stuff. Using the search option on the start menu doesnt bring anything up for this folder, and im desperate to get my GB back lol. So any suggestions? That still doesnt explain the loss of GB after I free it up, i had it to 11 GB earlier and in 3 days it went back to 7. Virus-Scan brought up nothing, but is it maybe a worm or something. I recently installed the windows virus protection service pack one before I noticed the drop, does anyone know how much GB this takes up. Thanks a lot!! Remember its called the RECYCLER folder but its impossible to be found, and search also doesnt bring up the files that are inside the Recycler folder, but Norton shows them.

[caperjack]

if you right click on that recycler folder and click properties it should tell you the path to the folder ,my quess is it in the norton directory !:)

[NiTeHaWk4787]

You can't click properties, right-clicking comes up as What's This? and it just says ,"This shows all your files for easy access" or something like that

[cscgal]

I agree that it might be the Norton-protected Recycle Bin. Perhaps it's set to hold that capacity of old files?

[NiTeHaWk4787]

I right clicked on the recycle bin and emptied all my norton protected files, but I do that everyday anyway. Where would I find the norton directory? Im 14 so I dont really know a ton about this stuff :)

[NiTeHaWk4787]

i found all the missing space yay! i found that recycler folder by typing C:\recycler into the Run program and deleted all the space-taking garbage. but the weird thing is that over a few hours, it drops by .01 GB's when i cleaned it it was at 18.5 gb's now a few hours later its 18.3. *confused

[NiTeHaWk4787]

oops i mean it goes down by .1 sometimes

[motech]

Try uninstalling Norton... I've had crappy results with their
system suites since M$ switched to Win95. Cruddy piece of
shite... only in the last few years have they made computers
that are physically capable of running that crud without slowing
them down considerably.

[caperjack]

i found all the missing space yay! i found that recycler folder by typing C:\recycler into the Run program and deleted all the space-taking garbage. but the weird thing is that over a few hours, it drops by .01 GB's when i cleaned it it was at 18.5 gb's now a few hours later its 18.3. *confused

when you reboot the computer does it go back to showing the 18.5 ,windows uses the hard drive as a virtual memory ,swap file /page file in XP .that is restored after rebooting.
I also recomend removing norton system works .

[NiTeHaWk4787]

i havent restarted the comp yet ill try later, if u dont use norton what do u use for virus prevention?

[caperjack]

You can still use norton antivirus ,just not he system works ,full of problems ,i found ,i used nortons antivirus for years uninstalled it lastweek and ,I just started useing this free one .by AVG
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

[NiTeHaWk4787]

thx 4 the help every1 but its all fixed now ^^ nortons still in i dunno if i find probs with it later ill remove it

[Nonborn]

I am new to this forum, and I am only 15... but give me a chance at this. The RECYCLER folder is not a Norton folder. RECYCLER folder is in all Windows computers that are newer than Windows 95 (not sure about 98). The RECYCLER folder is an extremely hidden folder that keeps track of all the deleted/erased data from the computer so the computer can retrieve them for people who know how (very few do know how). This folder is not able to be accessed through My Computer. The "Run" way of accessing it may be true for some computers, but to access it and to see what is in it can be done through the Command Prompt for all computers with the RECYCLER folder. Enter the Command Prompt, usually found Start > Programs > Accessories. In Prompt type the command "CD C:\RECYCLER". This changes the directory (hence "CD") to RECYCLER folder. Now in the RECYCLER folder, enter the command "ftype" to see all the contents of the folder. Some of the text might not be visible because the Command Prompt has a "character limit" and most people's trash will surpass this limit.

- Nonborn -

[NiTeHaWk4787]

sry to get back to this topic so late, but i just did what ur post said and theirs like a million files lol, how can they be deleted?

[Kamakzie]

Thanks for this guys, I know this is an old thread but I was having a problem with one of my drives. I checked Norton and sure enough it had 70 gigs of deleted stuff!!!!!!!