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go4urs 0 Light Poster

Hello Forum

I have been having the nightmare of all computer nightmares for the past few months. I have been trying to compose a succint letter to paste here and get help, but my comp keeps doing its thing, and I cant finish the letter.

I'm still working on explaining all the problems, but I would like to address one, that might fix a couple of others.

In the midst of the nightmare, I suddenly began getting low space error messages (amongst others). I was surprised because this Gateway Tablet PC (Piece of Crap) has 70 GB. I use 20-30 for music, and I'm sure I use a lot less than 1 GB for everything else.

Now I cant get onto America Online because everytime it loads it says there is not enough free space. Although I deselected it in MSConfig, AOL loads and crashes almost every time I start the computer. I went to the C drive and sure enough 64 GB are used! ON WHAT?! The only games I have are Diner Dash and Monopoly.

So, here's the question. How do I find out what is using 35+ GB of my space? I tried to go through the folders, but I have to open each one. Shouldnt I be able to just click on the file, and get a pie chart that shows # of GB inside? Windows Me used to have that feature I think, but I cant find an easy way to do this on XP. Do I really have to click through hundreds of folders or whatever, or is there some trick? Now, I have to select each folder, right click, and select properties to find out the size of the file.
And how worried should I be that something is taking up that much space?

Thanks

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Dani AI

Generated

Notes for : common causes of mysteriously large disk usage on Windows XP include System Restore snapshots (System Volume Information), the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys), the page file (pagefile.sys), Windows Update backup files, large user media/mail folders, temp/browser caches, and occasionally malware. Because Explorer does not show folder sizes at a glance, a small workflow speeds diagnosis and cleanup.

  1. Run the built-in Disk Cleanup (Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup) and use the option to remove system files/older restore points.
  2. Use a visual disk-usage scanner to find the biggest folders and files quickly (for example, WinDirStat).
  3. For scripted or command-line summaries, use the Sysinternals Disk Usage tool (Sysinternals DU).
  4. Make hidden and protected OS files visible (Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View) to spot hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys; do not delete these files directly. Disable hibernation via Power Options to remove hiberfil.sys and change virtual memory in System Properties if the pagefile needs resizing.
  5. Empty the Recycle Bin and remove obsolete restore points or large installer/update backups after backing up important data.

Caution: do not manually delete items from System Volume Information or other protected system folders. Back up before bulk deletions and run a full antivirus/malware scan if unexplained files persist.

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