Help: Missing Hard Drive Space

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Searcher7

I have a Maxtor harddrive (6.4G, #90650U2) in my system, and I
continually get "Low Disk Space" pop-up.

I only have about 300mb of files on my desktop, but in "My Computer"
it shows that I haveunder 100mb. I can't figure out what is taking up
all the space on my hard drive.

I'm running WindowsME.

Any advice would be appreciated,

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
Ew. Run Scandisk, you most likely have an inconsistency in the
filesystem that is causing free space reports to be erroneous.
Click to expand...

I run Scandisk regularly.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
I have a Maxtor harddrive (6.4G, #90650U2) in my system, and I
continually get "Low Disk Space" pop-up.

I only have about 300mb of files on my desktop, but in "My Computer"
it shows that I haveunder 100mb. I can't figure out what is taking up
all the space on my hard drive.

I'm running WindowsME.

Any advice would be appreciated,
Click to expand...
Was System Restore part of WinME? If so, it could be that.

Go to www.ccleaner.com, download that and run that first. I've cleaned
GBs of temp files from peoples computers on a first run.
 
(e-mail address removed)>, (e-mail address removed)2.com
says...
I have a Maxtor harddrive (6.4G, #90650U2) in my system, and I
continually get "Low Disk Space" pop-up.

I only have about 300mb of files on my desktop, but in "My Computer"
it shows that I haveunder 100mb. I can't figure out what is taking up
all the space on my hard drive.

I'm running WindowsME.

Any advice would be appreciated,

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
Click to expand...

Virtual memory taking up too much space, perhaps. Have a look for
pagefile.sys. It should be in the root of your C: drive. You may need
to go to the menu item:

tools>>folder options

then click on the view tab and change to 'Show hidden files and folders'
and untick 'Hide protected operating system files' before you can see
it.
 
Conor said:
Was System Restore part of WinME? If so, it could be that.

Go to www.ccleaner.com, download that and run that first. I've cleaned
GBs of temp files from peoples computers on a first run.


--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams
Click to expand...

------------

Or it could be the distribution center for a Russian kiddy porn huckster
that is using your computer to dispense such pathetic filth.

Just be compliant when the FBI breaks through your doorway at three in the
morning. Try to sleep in the cell with your back against the wall.

Just kidding. Well, sort of.


Ed Cregger
 
I run Scandisk regularly.
Click to expand...

How much space is taken by Temporary Internet Files, Temp directories, and
Pagefile? When was the last time you purged the Temp directories and reset the
allowed Temp Internet Files limit to 10 MB or so?
 
Was System Restore part of WinME? If so, it could be that.

Go towww.ccleaner.com, download that and run that first. I've cleaned
GBs of temp files from peoples computers on a first run.

--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams
Click to expand...

I tried CCleaner and it initially released about 3/4 of a gig of hard
drive space, but it has been slowly going back down toward zero again.

However, not I can't open the explorer browser or any folders on my
desktop.(I'm using Mozilla Firefox).

The pop-pop I get when I attempt to open a desktop folder says:
"Explorer has caused an arror in KERNEL32.DLL.
Explorer will not close."

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Darren
 
I'm still having problems. I can't open "My Computer", "Recycle Bin",
"Internet Explorer", or any folders on my desktop.

The only way to navigate into a folder or to one of my USB connected
micro drives is if I use the "attach a file" option in an e-mail so
the file upload window pops up. I can then click them open from there,
but can do little else.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************
 
I'm still having problems. I can't open "My  Computer", "Recycle Bin",
"Internet Explorer", or any folders on my desktop.

The only way to navigate into a folder or to one of my USB connected
micro drives is if I use the "attach a file" option in an e-mail so
the file upload window pops up. I can then click them open from there,
but can do little else.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

***************************************************************************­****************************************************************
Click to expand...

OK, if its that bad on a FAT32 WinDOS machine then its almost always a
waste of time fixing it. As long as you've got your winme cd and it
reads ok, or can backup the c/windows/options/cabs folder onto
external media, then just backup your data, format the drive, start
again. Trust me its a waste of time otherwise. Why? WinDOS crashes
regularly, and on a FAT32 drive each crash eats lumps out of the data,
leaving windows beyond repair after a while. There are also other
gradual failure modes that act on winDOS, and trying to fix them all
is somewhat futile.

If you're curious, Spacemonger should show you what's eating the
space, if anything is. I've seen MS security software do that before.

Meanwhile empty c/windows/temp, recycle bin, internet file cache. You
can do that from DOS, which you can access using any winDOS startup
disc other than winME (so 95 or 98).


NT
 
OK, if its that bad on a FAT32 WinDOS machine then its almost always a
waste of time fixing it. As long as you've got your winme cd and it
reads ok, or can backup the c/windows/options/cabs folder onto
external media, then just backup your data, format the drive, start
again. Trust me its a waste of time otherwise. Why? WinDOS crashes
regularly, and on a FAT32 drive each crash eats lumps out of the data,
leaving windows beyond repair after a while. There are also other
gradual failure modes that act on winDOS, and trying to fix them all
is somewhat futile.

If you're curious, Spacemonger should show you what's eating the
space, if anything is. I've seen MS security software do that before.

Meanwhile empty c/windows/temp, recycle bin, internet file cache. You
can do that from DOS, which you can access using any winDOS startup
disc other than winME (so 95 or 98).

NT
Click to expand...


To free enough RAM to be able to do the above, you could either

a) boot up in safe mode, by pressing f8 when it starts to boot

or b) ctrl alt del and shutdown everything expcet explorer & systray.

If after b it behaves better, you can make those changes permanent by
doing:
start, run, type in msconfig, startup tab, and untick the processes
you dont want to start everytime the pc boots.

I dont know what you do and dont know - hopefully something there is
useful.


NT
 
OK, if its that bad on a FAT32 WinDOS machine then its almost always a
waste of time fixing it. As long as you've got your winme cd and it
reads ok, or can backup the c/windows/options/cabs folder onto
external media, then just backup your data, format the drive, start
again. Trust me its a waste of time otherwise. Why? WinDOS crashes
regularly, and on a FAT32 drive each crash eats lumps out of the data,
leaving windows beyond repair after a while. There are also other
gradual failure modes that act on winDOS, and trying to fix them all
is somewhat futile.

If you're curious, Spacemonger should show you what's eating the
space, if anything is. I've seen MS security software do that before.

Meanwhile empty c/windows/temp, recycle bin, internet file cache. You
can do that from DOS, which you can access using any winDOS startup
disc other than winME (so 95 or 98).

NT
Click to expand...

Ok, I can no longer get the Maxtor drive to power up. (There is no
vibration consistent with a running drive when I press the PC's power
button).

Does that mean it is dead and now garbage?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
Searcher7 said:
Ok, I can no longer get the Maxtor drive to power up. (There is no
vibration consistent with a running drive when I press the PC's power
button).

Does that mean it is dead and now garbage?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
Click to expand...

boot up in DOS and see if you get access.
Try the HDD in another machine, see if it works. Even if it doesnt,
that doesnt mean the HDD is junk, might just be a bad file system.

Either way, youre wasting your time doing anything but wiping and
reformatting.


NT
 
Searcher7wrote:



boot up in DOS and see if you get access.
Try the HDD in another machine, see if it works. Even if it doesnt,
that doesnt mean the HDD is junk, might just be a bad file system.

Either way, youre wasting your time doing anything but wiping and
reformatting.

NT- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

I wouldn't know the specifics of how to boot up in DOS. I'd need step-
by-step instructions and I've never seen anything accurate on that
subject.

ANyway, I jussst wanted to attempt to get important files/folders of
the drive.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
Searcher7wrote:



boot up in DOS and see if you get access.
Try the HDD in another machine, see if it works. Even if it doesnt,
that doesnt mean the HDD is junk, might just be a bad file system.

Either way, youre wasting your time doing anything but wiping and
reformatting.

NT- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

I wouldn't know the specifics of how to boot up in DOS. I'd need step-
by-step instructions and I've never seen anything accurate on that
subject.

Anyway, I just wanted to attempt to get important files/folders off
the drive.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
Searcher7 said:
I wouldn't know the specifics of how to boot up in DOS. I'd need step-
by-step instructions and I've never seen anything accurate on that
subject.

ANyway, I jussst wanted to attempt to get important files/folders of
the drive.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
Click to expand...

Someone mentioned this application on one of the microsoft.* groups,
and I thought it had a neat graphical interface. It makes spotting
large files that waste space, a lot easier. I actually did a bit
of cleanup on one of my disks, by using this.

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview/

By using that tool, you may be able to figure out the path to the
wasteful file. If you post the path here, maybe someone can suggest
what to do about it. Something in a user storage area is easy to
deal with. Something which is a system file, may require
more tricks.

Paul
 
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