Where's My HD Space Going?

[Del_R]

This old thing (the PC, not me!) is on it's last legs but I'm trying to make it last another year or two so the following problem is quite frustrating.

 

I had a message pop-up saying drive C is full. A quick deletion of temp internet files, and an emptying of the recycle bin and I got the space up into the 20mb category, which allowed me to complete the piece of work I was doing.

 

I then sat down and spent an hour deleting unused programs and utilities and eventually got the unused capacity of drive c to a massive (!) 160 mb.

 

On a roll, I continued to look for redundant files and found my Zone Alarm log file was a whopping 7 mb. I emptied this figuring I'd now be at 167 mb of spare capacity... but weirdly I was down to 107mb.

 

A tad annoyed I then deleted several more programs - including Netscape Communicator (which I never use). These all went into the recycle bin - where the total was in the region of 55 mb. Emptying the bin my spare capacity now zoomed back up to 167 mb (although, without the problem of which I write, I'd have expected it to be in the range of 240).

 

I restarted the PC... spare capacity immediately dropped to 107 mb. I opened and closed Word without saving anything... 103 mb.

 

Started a defrag - but stopped it pending an overnight run... capacity now 93mb.

 

What's going on? By my reckoning I should have saved over 200 mb space this morning yet something's eating it up as fast as I can create it.

 

Any ideas on where I should look to find out what's going on? It's a Windows 98 machine with a 4 gigabyte HD.

 

Perplexed Del

[Newt]

I'd guess at a combination of spyware and general sludge. Try the 'general cleanup' and after that's finished, get both Ad-aware and Spybot, update, and run them to remove trash they find.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

 

Dr. Newt's general clean-up instructions for Win95/98/ME

• Open a browser window and dump all TIF (temporary internet files) and cookies. Close.
  
• Open windows explorer and
  .. delete the contents of all temp folders
  .. delete any files in c: with a name filennnn.chk (where nnnn is any number so file0001.chk, file1034.chk, etc)
  
• verify that you have fewer than 500 files & folders directly under c:. If you are close to that number, remove or move some files.
  
• empty the recycle bin
  
• boot to DOS
  
• from the command prompt do the following
  .. scanreg /fix (press the ENTER key)
  .. scanreg /opt
  ****note that 95 does not have scanreg.exe but a copy from 98 or ME will run fine if you can get one
  .. scandisk c: /nosave /autofix /surface
  .. Win /D:M (forces a safe mode windows start)
  
• Run another scandisk (start~programs~accessories~system tools) and check for a standard scan and to fix all errors found. The DOS scan couldn't check for long file name issues.
  
• Run a defrag
  
• Reboot to normal Windows.
  

 

[ 30. December 2004, 03:12 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[Del_R]

Thanks Newt. Excellent advice and it helped a lot.

 

Cheers!

Del

[Newt]

Del - that cleaning routine is one I recommend at least once a month on 9X systems. Keeps things running smoother than otherwise.

 

As to the spyware apps, I like them as well but if you set spybot to immunize and keep it up to date and also get spywareblaster and let it do additional immunizing with regular updates, you'll have a cleaner system with less need to kill off critters. Even with limited drive space, I'd say those two should be given a home on your PC.

[Jim Roper]

Will it work with windows 2K?

The news channels video clips are eating up my hard drive space even though I think I am deleting everything!

[Newt]

Jim - it won't. Many of the tasks don't apply to any operating system based on the NT engine.

 

Try clicking on start => run =>, keying in cleanmgr.exe and OK then letting things work. May take a while but see if it helps. Post back with 'it did' or 'it did not'.

 

[ 01. January 2005, 03:04 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[Jim Roper]

Tried it Newt.

It appeared to do no more than Disk Cleanup, though.

[Newt]

That's all it does Jim. 2K is sort of an orphan child and missing lots of the utilities that came with earlier versions. XP's defrag does lots of cleanup that 2K can't do so you really need some 3rd party tools for an effective job.

 

One that will help with cleaning up your registry hives is PageDefrag. I used it on all the NT4 and later the 2K systems I worked with.

 

On the positive side, 2K is less prone to the sort of sludge that 9X/ME had problems with. If you are seeing major performance issues and you have done cleanup and defrag, you are probably dealing with some spyware that is slowing things down. What anti-spyware tools are you using?

 

[ 02. January 2005, 04:42 AM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[Jim Roper]

I run Add-aware, Spybot, Spywareblaster and Zone alarm has a facility for searching for spyware.

The only thing they don't seem able to keep out is stuff from a site associated with Bravenet. Unfortunately it is a fishing forum (http://pub47.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=3979783808&cpv=1) that some other AN posters use.

I suppose there is a way of immunising against it in Spywareblaster.

About 2 months ago I could run Disk Cleanup, delete all the Norton Protected Files from the recycle bin, run the ZoneAlarm cache cleaner and had over 200MB of free space on the C: partition that holds all the programmes. Now when I do all that I only have about 70MB without having installed anything.

I can't run defrag due to lack of space.

Guess I'll have to fit the new 40GB hard drive that's on the shelf in the corner.

 

[ 02. January 2005, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: Jim Roper ]

[Pugs]

Newt:

 

I'd be careful of deleting all the contents found under Temp folders. MS Office has a annoying habit of placing it's installation logs under these and so forth and if you delete them it gets the hump.

 

Whilst on the subject I'm a developer and when i send out software installation packages I make sure that it 'cleans' itself up afterwards. Why is it that well known software companies insist on using Temp folders for installation and then do not empty it afterwards? It really annoys me and under my profile, my temp folder it's now half a gig! However i daren't delete a lot of these files due to Office breaking