Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations gkittelson on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

XP Home - Disk Space Disappearing

Status
Not open for further replies.

DanJV

IS-IT--Management
Sep 10, 2001
19
US
One of my co-workers brought me their home computer with Win XP Home on it. They have a 40gig drive, and there is currently only 20 megs free. With every boot of the system, 2 gigs seems to go away. I was able to find that over 30 gigs of disk space is in a hidden system folder called System Volume Information. I believe this is the restore information maintained by Windows? At this point, I'm not sure if that folder is the one growing with every reboot, but I am sure this is a waste of data space. I went in to try and disable the system restore feature and it said it couldn't and suggested a reboot. I did so, but still can't seem to shut it off. Also, I noted the restriction settings and it shouldn't be allowing that much disk space usage anyway. So, now I'm wondering if I'm off track as to the source of these files. Can anyone tell me how to stop this consumption of disk space and get rid of the files?
 
open up my computer right click c: drive click disk cleanup then click on more options, system restore then cleanup
 
Thanks for the help Buckeye. However, it only cleared a very small amount. It almost appears that the system restore program is corrupted or something. I cannot shut it off (system restore encountered an error, please restart-which doesn't help). I also cannot reduce the amount of disk space being used....moving the slider prompts me as to whether I want to shut off system restore. So, I thought maybe it was relative to the amount of disk space and after your suggestion didn't work, I deleted one of the folders. For now I have 1.17 gig free, but I fear a major problem is learking. Any thoughts?
 
system restore encounters an error is probally because of low disk space, open up the system volume folder if you get acess denied then you will need to take ownership of the folder:
once it is open go into the folder that starts with _restore and remove all but the last rp folders highlight them all then right click then hold down the shift key and click delete this will delete without sending to the recycle bin
 
Thank you for the quick replys. There were about 85 restore points in the folder. When I did all but the most recent RP folder, one of them from November gives an error "cannot remove folder, it is being used by another program. So, I skipped it and found that all of the folders from November of last year cannot be removed. I was able to remove the rest and recover disk space, however still cannot disable system restore or change its settings, or access the restore wizard. Can the System Restore be uninstalled and reinstalled?
 
302796 - Troubleshooting System Restore in Windows XP

Some general things to try.

Try Safe Mode (Do you have this problem in Safe Mode?).

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking.

Run the System File Checker program from the Run Box by typing.....Sfc /Scannow in it and have your XP CD handy.

HOW TO: Verify Unsigned Device Drivers in Windows XP

If they don't work you could try repairing windows itself by running it over itself. You will lose all your windows updates but your files will be untouched.

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP (Q315341)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top