Losing space on my hard drive?

[RachelC]

I've been getting warnings that I'm running out of space on my 6 gig hard drive (going below 200 MB). I make space (deleting maybe 100 MB to go up to, say, 275 MB), then a few days later I've mysteriously gone down to 150 MB without adding any files that I'm aware of. I've deleted temp files & temp internet files & junk shareware; I've scanned and defragged my hard drive; I've done a virus scan using updated NAV; and I've zipped most of my data, but still I keep losing space. Do I have an undetected virus? A hard drive about to die?

Background: My computer is a lemon of a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop, a year and a half old. I'm on my third motherboard, my battery's died twice, and the back is held on by electrical tape. I upgraded my BIOS twice (when my battery failed), the last time in April. The hard drive is quite noisy. Don't know what's relevant! Thanks for any advice!

 

[jexster]

Well you could have a bad hard drive but before running out to get a new laptop altough it sounds like you need to anyways try downloading window washer and just set it up to run periodically on your system.This may not cure your problem but it should help you retain at least some of your hdd.

 

[prajapat]

From your message it seem that you install shareware frequently. most of the softwares when installed, copies some files to windows direstory and sometime replaces existing system files, making a backup copy. The same applies to the system file checker. You can recover good deal of space by following these steps (carefully).
1. open Program Files directory and removes all the related directories of the installed softwares, for which you are sure they have been uninstalled already.
2. Do the same thing for directories (folder) on HDD usually located in root directory (C:\).
3. scandisk and delete any lost clusters.
4. Search for files with extension *.chk, *.bak, *.00? and *.gid on the whole hard disk and delete them.
5. see the directory /windows/system and look for Win.* files and delete except Win.com & win.ini carefully. somer examples of such files are win.nu1, win.bak, win.001, win.cb, win.syd etc. you need to view the content of the file and if it looks like that of win.ini, you may delete it.
6. Follow step 5 for system.* files while leaving system.ini. Content to deleted file should look like that of system.ini.
7. Empty the recycle bin.
Now you should have significant recovered space.
Best of the luck.

 

[Kjonnnn]

When it says its running low.. do a search for large filess and see whats added.

Go into SEARCH FILES and search for files AT LEAST 3000KB..
maybe its making some large logg files

 

[Guest_imported]

Hi,
I had similiar problem. I received excellnet advice from this site. Check under System properties for Disk space usage. If it set for high, bring it down to about 300 MB. Every time the machine boots, files are backed-up and this keeps on adding. Godd luck

 

[hotfusion]

In win98 right click the recycle bin and reduce the amount reserved for its use. This can free up a little, But it sounds like some app. is leaving large files.
I know of an instance where a scanner was retaining copies of everything scanned in the program's directory - it was only by chance they were found. My suggestions are what I would try myself. If incorrect, I welcome corrections to my rather limited knowledge. Andy.

 

[RachelC]

A belated thanks to everyone who so generously offered help in this forum! Somehow I got labeled a "technical user," but I am hardly that! Happy ending: after several months of daily warnings that I was going under 200 MB, no matter how much I deleted, my hard drive seems to have finally come to its senses: it now tells me I have nearly 2 gigs free. The only change I can figure is that I downloaded a Windows Update related to my Media Player. Mysterious!

(What's window washer, by the way? Where do I find it?)

Rachel

 

[Guest_imported]

I have a Maxtor 40.0 GB hard drive, but when I right click on my D:/ drive (maxtor drive), it says that my total capacity is only 31.4 GB. I have a Win98 SE. I have partitioned my drive using fdisk and formated it too. My bios is on AUTO detect hard drive, and i noticed that i couldn't change the hard drive's size from bios or fdisk. I don't know what to do, help would be appreciated...