C Drive shows Full but it is not

[ShprGal]

I have a Dell Latitude D620 Lap top. I was working in Microsoft Movie Maker,
which I do not know is important to this issue or not, but wanted to mention
it. I was trying to save it to the movie format and it ran out of memory to
perform the task. I had to force quit the application and restart the
computer. Now, I am getting a message that my C drive is critically low on
memory. I have 55.8 gigs on the drive, and it is showing that 55.3 are in
use. I have nothing near that amount of data on the drive, I have only had
it for a week. I feel that this is related to the Movie Maker error, but am
not sure. I have done the disk cleanup, and it shows nothing near this size
to be cleared. I did the degrag and it made very little difference. Where
might this memory be trapped, and how can I clear it? Any help would be
greatly appreciated.

 

[Andrew E.]

Try run,type: CLEANMGR /SAGESET Chk all the boxes,return to run,type:
CLEANMGR /SAGERUN Return to run,type: cmd In cmd,type: CHKDSK C: /F
Agree to restart,type: EXIT Restart pc.

 

[Richard in AZ]

|I have a Dell Latitude D620 Lap top. I was working in Microsoft Movie Maker,
| which I do not know is important to this issue or not, but wanted to mention
| it. I was trying to save it to the movie format and it ran out of memory to
| perform the task. I had to force quit the application and restart the
| computer. Now, I am getting a message that my C drive is critically low on
| memory. I have 55.8 gigs on the drive, and it is showing that 55.3 are in
| use. I have nothing near that amount of data on the drive, I have only had
| it for a week. I feel that this is related to the Movie Maker error, but am
| not sure. I have done the disk cleanup, and it shows nothing near this size
| to be cleared. I did the degrag and it made very little difference. Where
| might this memory be trapped, and how can I clear it? Any help would be
| greatly appreciated.

Look in your "My Documents" - "My Videos" for a large video file.
Most likely you have a very large video file saved.

Your computer hard drive is no where near large enough to doing Movie Editing.

 

[JS]

First use Windows 'Disk Cleanup' to create more space on your C: drive.
Description of the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

I suspect Movie Maker created a lot of temporary files
than where not deleted for one reason or another.
Check Movie Maker's Options setting to see where
the default location (Folder path) for temporary files is
set to. The use Windows Explorer to delete these files.

Next: Empty the Recycle Bin.

Then if you are still low on disk space try CCleaner:
http://www.ccleaner.com/
Use this tool to remove Internet history info, cookies, temp files,
auto complete and other junk.
Note that when CCleaner is first installed most if not all the options
are checked which is far too aggressive. So I recommend unchecking
all the items listed in 'Applications' tab and in the 'Windows' tab
selectively place a check mark for only those options that are of some
value in increasing the amount of free space on your PC.

The 'Analyze' button allows you preview (without actually deleting)
what and how much hard drive space you will get back.

Also available is customization, see Options/Custom to add any
other/additional folders you want files deleted from.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have a Dell Latitude D620 Lap top. I was working in Microsoft
Movie Maker, which I do not know is important to this issue or not,
but wanted to mention it. I was trying to save it to the movie
format and it ran out of memory to perform the task. I had to
force quit the application and restart the computer. Now, I am
getting a message that my C drive is critically low on memory. I
have 55.8 gigs on the drive, and it is showing that 55.3 are in
use. I have nothing near that amount of data on the drive, I have
only had it for a week. I feel that this is related to the Movie
Maker error, but am not sure. I have done the disk cleanup, and it
shows nothing near this size to be cleared. I did the degrag and
it made very little difference. Where might this memory be
trapped, and how can I clear it? Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

"Memory" and "Disk Space" - two different concepts - although with "Virtual
Memory" there can be overlap.

Find the movie you were working on - sounds like things went a little
haywire - it outrgrew (for whatever reason - likely codec related) whatever
you were trying to do, ran out of space and here you are - trying to free it
up.

Start with this...

SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

Using one of those tools - you can find the file(s) that is taking up the
space.

Otherwise...

If you are comfortable with the stability of your system, you can delete the
uninstall files for the patches that Windows XP has installed...
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spack.htm
( Particularly of interest here - #4 )
( Alternative: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm )

You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but your
latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..

When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the system's
memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of the hiberfil.sys
file will always equal the amount of physical memory in your system. If you
don't use the hibernate feature and want to recapture the space that Windows
uses for the hiberfil.sys file, perform the following steps:

- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start, Settings,
Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check box, then
click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting Never under the
"System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab doesn't delete the
hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power Schemes
tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.

You can control how much space your System Restore can use...

1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and click on
the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I suggest moving
the slider until you have just about 1GB (1024MB or close to that...)
5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.

You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can utilize...

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 64MB and 128MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 64MB and 128MB. (It may be MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:

Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being used.

In the end - a standard Windows XP installation with all sorts of extras
will not likely be above about 4.5GB to 9GB in size. If you have more space
than that (likely do on a modern machine) and most of it seems to be used -
likely you need to copy *your stuff* off and/or find a better way to manage
it.

 

[Gerry]

ShprGal

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy.

The file you are looking for will almost certainly be listed in the Most
Fragmented Files list.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Jose]

I have a Dell Latitude D620 Lap top.  I was working in Microsoft Movie Maker,
which I do not know is important to this issue or not, but wanted to mention
it.  I was trying to save it to the movie format and it ran out of memory to
perform the task.  I had to force quit the application and restart the
computer.  Now, I am getting a message that my C drive is critically low on
memory.  I have 55.8 gigs on the drive, and it is showing that 55.3 arein
use.  I have nothing near that amount of data on the drive, I have onlyhad
it for a week.  I feel that this is related to the Movie Maker error, but am
not sure.  I have done the disk cleanup, and it shows nothing near thissize
to be cleared.  I did the degrag and it made very little difference.  Where
might this memory be trapped, and how can I clear it?  Any help would be
greatly appreciated.  

If you think you might have some huge file(s) on your hard disk, why
not find out or rule it out altogether as the problem so you can be
sure?

The XP Search function (from the Start menu) will let you search any/
all drives for files greater than 1MB (default) or you can specify
greater than any size you want. There are other search options that
may be of interest.

When it is done, you can sort the results by size, date, etc.

 

[Paul]

I have a Dell Latitude D620 Lap top. I was working in Microsoft Movie Maker,
which I do not know is important to this issue or not, but wanted to mention
it. I was trying to save it to the movie format and it ran out of memory to
perform the task. I had to force quit the application and restart the
computer. Now, I am getting a message that my C drive is critically low on
memory. I have 55.8 gigs on the drive, and it is showing that 55.3 are in
use. I have nothing near that amount of data on the drive, I have only had
it for a week. I feel that this is related to the Movie Maker error, but am
not sure. I have done the disk cleanup, and it shows nothing near this size
to be cleared. I did the degrag and it made very little difference. Where
might this memory be trapped, and how can I clear it? Any help would be
greatly appreciated.

If you want a graphical way to examine the disk, try this university
written program. It is an excellent way to find monster files on a
partition. Hold your mouse over the big one, to get the file name.

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

Paul