Could vista still be there?........what do you think?

[longhotsummer]

Hello all,

I bought a Samsung NP-NC10 Notebook. It had XP installed. I replace it with Vista Ultimate, only to crash it as the Notebook won’t accept Vista (presumably because the version I installed is 64-bit?). So, I reinstalled XP and system drivers from the Reload discs. NoteBook now functioning correctly.

However, the 6Gb memory is almost full! I’ve done Disk Cleanup and compressed the Drive (E) to save space. Still almost full. Apart from about 600Mb pics, and IE8, I have no installed no large files.

I am wondering if the Vista files are still on it. I’ve looked in Program Files and WINDOWS folders, and can’t find any sub-folders that relate to Vista.

Any ideas on why the memory could be so full, and if Vista could be still on it and causing the issue?

I’d be grateful. Thanks very much.

NB: Sizes of the 4 largest folders on Local Disk E:

Documents and Settings: 1.04 GB
MSOCache: 529 MB
Program Files: 1.06 GB
WINDOWS: Size: 2.00 GB / Size on disk: 1.40 GB.

[normanallen]

Have you checked all the system folders are visible to you? Use Windows Explorer, on the Tools menu select Folder Options, then on the View Tab, set 'Display contents of System Folders' and 'Show Hidden files and folders' and unset 'Hide protected operating system folders'. That should be enough to see exactly what is on your machine.
There are programs available to do an examination of your disk and tell you the sizes of all the folders, so you can see where your space has gone. Try Treesize, there is a free version available, and run it on your C: drive. That should do the trick!

[normanallen]

Also why are you looking at the E: drive? Whatever happened to C:?

[longhotsummer]

Have you checked all the system folders are visible to you?

Yes, thank you.

There are programs available to do an examination of your disk and tell you the sizes of all the folders, so you can see where your space has gone. Try Treesize, there is a free version available, and run it on your C: drive. That should do the trick!

I run my cursor over each folder and it tells me the size of the contents. What additional useful info would Treesize provide?

Also why are you looking at the E: drive? Whatever happened to C:?

That's just it.............I can't understand this. I'm in My Computer/Files Stored on This Computer and under Hard Disk Drives, only Local Disk ( E: ) appears.

Any ideas why C: is not showing would be most appreciated.

[normanallen]

If you run your cursor over a folder it gives you the size of just that folder. Treesize will tell you the total size of that folder and any sub-folders as well.
What kind of install did you do to get back to XP? When you were (re)installing XP did you have any devices attached that might have confused the install process into thinking it had to install on E:?

[longhotsummer]

^^^^ Thank you. Yes, I had a CD Drive attached. Had to, as the NoteBook has no internal CD drive. This may be why the Drive has been renamed C to E?

Also, pagefile.sys is MASSIVE, at over 1.5 GB. I've changed System Settings for Memory to let system choose size, and then rebooted, but pagefile.sys is still almost as big.

Defragment, cleanup, etc, have made little difference.

I am almost tempted to run Norton Government Wipe over the damned thing and rebuild...again. But, I'd still have to reinstall from an external disc drive, and I'll also have to fish around again on the Samsung website for certain drivers (wireless, for eg) since these aren't on the reload disks. More hours of work that I don't want.

What should I do? I want to reduce the size of stored data. Could Vista still be on there?

[normanallen]

Let's take one step back. In your original post you said 6Gb memory. That doesn't make sense. Are you talking RAM or disk space, as neither makes much sense.
I have a 320Gb C: partition and my pagefile.sys is 2Gb.
You still haven't said how you did the XP (re)installation. If you did a clean install and reformatted the drive then Vista can't be there any more. If not, can you explain just what you did to get back to XP?

[longhotsummer]

Sure. I click on My Computer and run my cursor over the icon for the Hard Disk Drive E: The pop-up states: Free Space: 1.57 GB. Total Size: 6.00 GB. I copied some pics from a Memory Stick and eventually got a warning, stating that I was running out of space.

XP came installed on Notebook. I plugged in an external CD Drive to install Vista Ultimate from a CD. Pop-up stated that Notebook couldn’t read the CD (which was odd, as Vista disc is 100%). I suspected that the cheap CD Drive might be ‘unsympathetic’. So, I copied the Vista CD to a memory stick via my Desktop, plugged the Memory Stick into the NoteBook, and downloaded Vista from there. It loaded, then crashed. I eventually installed the 2 Reload Discs that came with the Notebook, using the external CD Drive. One contained XP. The other contained most of the Drivers.

On reinstall of XP, the C: Drive became an E: Drive. The memory is almost full. There are no pics, videos, etc installed. Just the standard software, plus Norton and a few other programs.

I’ve done all of the procedures outlined in my above e.mails. I’ve also just run Windows CHKDSK on E: Result = all verifications completed.

My concern is the lack of free space. Also, how to get C: drive back. Thank you.

[normanallen]

Go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, then under Storage, Disk Management.
That should tell you what partitions are on your hard disk. It would seem that you are using a small partition, probably at the end of the disk. It may even have held the recovery files for your XP installation (Dell do that). I suspect that the rest of the drive will be a LOT bigger. If it isn't formatted, format it as NTFS. I think you have to do a complete reinstall to get your system back onto the correct drive. When you do the install it should look to see what partitions are available for it to load windows into. It may be that your aborted attempt with Vista has somehow made that partition 'unavailable', and that it needs to be brought back into operation, so that windows can 'see' it.

[longhotsummer]

Ah…yes! Healthy (Unknown Partition) 143.04 GB. No File System stated. How do I format it, please?

[normanallen]

Just select the partition and right click, and you'll see Format as one of the options.

[longhotsummer]

Thanks. I tried that yesterday, but all options in the pop-up are greyed out, except Delete and Help.

[normanallen]

Oops! What EXACTLY did Disk Management say about that partition?
Under those circumstances I would use my copy of Partition Magic to access it. If you search the internet there are some free utilities to manipulate partitions. I would suggest trying one of them to see if it can format the partition. (but be carefull)

[longhotsummer]

Volume: (blank) / Layout: Partition / File System: (blank) / Status: Healthy (Unknown Partition) / Capacity: 143.04 GB / Free Space: 143.04 GB / % Free: 100% / Fault Tolerance: No / Overhead: 0%

What should I do?

[normanallen]

As the windows utility doesn't seem to know what to do with it, you are going to have to try one of the third party utilities to get that partition formatted. Once that's done, things should get better, but you have to be careful, as if you try to install on the correct disk, the installation process will think you already have a windows installation on the small disk, and think you have two installations. It would be better once you have the big partitioned as NTFS you could wipe the small partition, so that when you do come to install you can select the correct partition without any problems. If you have any data that you need I trust you have it backed up?

[longhotsummer]

Do you mean the Norton or PowerQuest version of Partition Magic?

[normanallen]

Well, I have Partition Magic 8 from when it was PowerQuest, but I don't really think it makes any difference. If you can find a trial version go for it!

[longhotsummer]

I've been away for 2 weeks. Have obtained Norton Partition Magic 8.0. Have saved it to a memory stick and plugged this into NoteBook. On the NoteBook, the hard drive is E: and the Memory Stick is C: The message I get when I try to Run Partition Magic is: Init failed. Error 117. Partition's drive letter cannot be identified.

Any ideas? I'd be grateful.

PS: Here's the Help Note on the Error Code. I can't run it from DOS, as I only have a download version. In addition, it was my installing a new operating system from a disk that started this!

#117 Partition’s drive letter cannot be identified
Under OS/2, PartitionMagic must be able to find the drive letter for each partition
before modifications can be made. There are various reasons why OS/2 might not
be able to find a drive letter for each partition. For example, a driver on your
system may change the drive letters from their defaults, or your partitions may
not have serial numbers.
You may also see this error when running PartitionMagic under Windows.
The solution is to run PartitionMagic from DOS or from MS-DOS mode (in
Windows 95 or Windows 98). When PartitionMagic runs from DOS or from
MS-DOS mode, it does not need to be able to find the drive letter for each
partition. Thus, if the problem indicated by this error message is the only
problem, PartitionMagic can run successfully.

[Carmy]

Um . . . Certainly no expert but I can only tell you what I found a couple of days ago.

DON'T LISTEN TO ME UNTIL ONE OF THE EXPERTS CONFIRMS IT IS OKAY TO DO THIS.

I had a spy program come in from somwhere that was tracking my activities on the Internet. One of my scan programs said it was in my registry at HKEYloca. I went in via Regedit, found it, and removed it.

The point is -- while I was in there (and I'm nervous about touching registry) I found Firefox and Nero listed. Those programs were booted out of my computer over a year ago but they were still sitting there. They're gone now. I don't know if this will help with your Vista problem.

[longhotsummer]

Thanks very much. The title of this thread is now out of date. This has become a partitioning issue.

[normanallen]

So it would seem. I think that if you want further help it would be better to close this thread and start another with a more accurate title.